I've spent several hours looking over all sorts of international routes using ExpertFlyer and have found essentially no availability ever for SWU usage. I thought I'd reach out to the forum to see if there might be a better way of thinking about this.

First, it could entirely be possible that there is good availability, but because the SWU's are processed automatically, they'll essentially never show on ExpertFlyer. If so, here are a few questions:

• Does anyone have a good sense of how far out SWU's tend to be processed? Inherent in this question is how far out AA tends to open inventory for SWU's.
• Is measuring current business class occupancy generally reflective of future SWU inventory availability, on average? Of course, demand could pick up closer in, but in general I've found there to be a good correlation between my probabilities for upgrades as Executive Platinum with domestic/Mexico business class upgrades and prior inventory. Do SWU's tend to work similarly?
• Is there a general sense of how likely SWU's are to clear? Are they extremely rare, or decently probable on less full flights? Again, if I look at a flight such as DFW-GDL and I see 3 open business class seats 2 weeks before, I've got a pretty good shot at clearing. This helps me book flights. Is there similar logic to SWU's - any strategies out there people use to maximize the probabilities of clearance?

My issue is that I have multiple SWU's that I'd like to use for long-haul travel, and I'm actually pretty open as to where to go. I'd rather not use them for 2-3 hour domestic flights, but I also don't want to just chance their use last minute and book flights to Japan or New Zealand in hopes of snagging an upgrade.