Originally Posted by
IAH-OIL-TRASH
There's no such waiting list for paid upgrades. If one pays cash for an upgrade, one gets the seat. No waitlist. It's actually one of reasons the number of available seats might shrink as the waitlist remains the same.
There is an option to immediately upgrade for a cash price but there is another option to request an upgrade for either cash or miles (sometimes miles + cash).
Anyways I think I got my answer. As I suspected, without offering 15k miles I'd be much lower on the upgrade list just considering my Gold status. The use of miles definitely placed me much higher on the list.
Thanks for the help.