Hi seasoned flyers,

I'm feeling a bit lost in navigating the options and best strategy to use 50 eupgrade credits that are expiring January 16. As a disclaimer, I don't travel for business being a local service based business owner for 30 years or so. As such I'm not up to date on the endless acronyms and abbreviations in many of these posts, so please bear with me. I've been 25k for about a year and a half.

Anyway, I'll be booking a roundtrip flight roughly from 1/8 - 1/26 from PDX to NRT and naturally want to enjoy the best class I can at the lowest price and use as many upgrade credits as possible. I'll need to book a standard fare to be able to use upgrade credits at all, I'm assuming I can only use the credits on the outbound and not the return since they expire before the return flight.
Outbound business class would be great for the $701 + 11 credits I'm seeing on the Flex fare, but my clearance window is only four days I believe. $2020 for guaranteed seating in business is not going to happen and the Flex fare is basically paying the higher cost for the possible chance of availability? Can I book Flex for outbound and chance it and book Standard for return?

Any advice would be helpful.




Standard
economy StandardNot eligible for eUpgrade between Portland (PDX) and Vancouver (YVR)You are outside your clearance window.You will be waitlisted between Vancouver (YVR) and Tokyo (NRT).Upgrade to Business Class14 eUpgrade Credit(s) + $220.7 *$616US $616
Select
Not eligible for eUpgrade between Portland (PDX) and Vancouver (YVR)
You are outside your clearance window.You will be waitlisted between Vancouver (YVR) and Tokyo (NRT).
Upgrade to Business Class
14 eUpgrade Credit(s) + $220.7 * economy

Flex
economy FlexNot eligible for eUpgrade between Portland (PDX) and Vancouver (YVR)You are outside your clearance window.You will be waitlisted between Vancouver (YVR) and Tokyo (NRT).Upgrade to Business Class11 eUpgrade Credit(s)$701US $701
Select
Not eligible for eUpgrade between Portland (PDX) and Vancouver (YVR)
You are outside your clearance window.You will be waitlisted between Vancouver (YVR) and Tokyo (NRT).
Upgrade to Business Class
11 eUpgrade Credit(s) economy

Latitude
economy LatitudeNot eligible for eUpgrade between Portland (PDX) and Vancouver (YVR)You are within your clearance window.eUpgrades available between Vancouver (YVR) and Tokyo (NRT)Upgrade to Business Class6 eUpgrade Credit(s)$2020
Refundable
US $2020
Select
Not eligible for eUpgrade between Portland (PDX) and Vancouver (YVR)
You are within your clearance window.eUpgrades available between Vancouver (YVR) and Tokyo (NRT)
Upgrade to Business Class
6 eUpgrade Credit(s)