My line of thinking (which could be completely off) is that perhaps this, in addition to the observation many have had about R space being zapped (nearly?) across the board, could mean that AC isn’t actually using the public R bucket for eUpgrade space anymore. Maybe as part of their effort to crack down on this info being available outside of their own system?
With latitude I could buy and then cancel to test as you did, but don’t want to screw things up too much and my purchase patterns are a bit more complex. What I’ve done in the past (with an employer that only buys Flex) is look for a flight with R space where the difference between Flex and Latitude isn’t huge. Then book in Flex and charge to company, then call in and upfare to Latitude with my personal card to allow for the instant upgrade to J.
But I don’t want to mess around with the first parts of that plan if I’m not reasonably sure the second parts will work when there is no R, but the AC site says upgrade space is available.
Originally Posted by
Stranger
Experience is of course totally anecdotal, so no way to get a definitive answer.
Any one person's experience is likely to be too small to be anything other than anecdotal - most people are only requesting upgrades a few times a year, and their memory may fade as to exactly what the website was telling them the last time they did this a few weeks ago, let alone what they saw 6 months ago. So even a few people sharing a few anecdotes doesn't have much probative value. But if a person, or perhaps a few people with different levels of status and looking at different routes, were to try this across a large number of flights, it might be meaningful enough to change the narrative. For example, if 2-4 people, looking at whatever routes they each wanted to look at, sat down and booked a bunch of different things, then requested an upgrade, recorded the results, and came up with the website being accurate 100/100 times, that might be a good basis on which to change the narrative as currently spelled out in the wiki.
I don't think AC is eliminating R space far out to make it harder to get information. I think they're doing it because they've seen too many seats being given away to cheap flexible fares - whether Aeroplan or people doing things like the ex-Europe Latitude fares. Those upgrades might also be going to the "wrong" people. In our minds, the "wrong" people are of course anyone who isn't us, and I'm not going to speculate whether AC thinks too many SEMMs are getting eUps way in advance and being disincentivized to give AC more money, or they think too many MSing ESQ 25Ks are taking away seats that should go to people who spend more money with the airline. Or something else entirely. But taking away R space and forcing people to run through the algorithm lets them make a decision as to whether a particular person on a specific fare is worthy of an upgrade, rather than putting it out there for anyone and everyone to take.
One thing that would be interesting, if a group of people were to test this, is to look at whether the website shows different availability to different people. Does a 50K see different availability on flight than an SEMM with premium credit card? Does a regular SE see different availability than the SMR? And is the preview feature equally accurate at different status levels?
A little bit of coordinated effort could definitely make a decent attempt at figuring out how reliable the website is these days, but it will require someone or a few people to put some work in beyond sharing a couple of anecdotal experiences.
Originally Posted by
Stranger
This said, my own limited experience (two upgrades this year) has been that in both cases, when the web site showed available, even though when processing the upgrade it initially showed unavailable, the upgrades got confirmed within minutes after requesting them.
The eUpgrade request flow has been broken in that sense for a couple of years. It will consistently say you'll be waitlisted even when there's R space and you're in your window. That part is completely useless. The question is whether the upgrade availability preview in the booking flow is now reasonably accuate.