Originally Posted by Herb687

That. Upgrades can just be incredibly day and time specific and highly variable from market to market. As posted above, I (Plat with far fewer LPs than 40K) recently was upgraded well in advance on a PHX-DFW flight when on the same itinerary I did not clear STS-PHX on an E75 with a very very generous F:Y seating ratio.

I always buy first when I need/really want to be in first. And I am usually good at predicting ahead of time when I will or will not be upgraded, when a flight will or will not go out full (I once did this for a living, after all) But even with that, every once in a while I have wound up buying a paid F ticket and wound up with an empty seat next to me in F on a hub-to-hub flight (CLT-DFW)

This thread is really just a collection of anecdotes with minimal predictive value. Other than the patently obvious like you will almost never get upgraded DFW>NYC/PHL/WAS/ATL on a Monday morning or NYC/PHL/WAS/ATL>DFW on a Thursday afternoon, visit this thread for entertaining anecdotes rather than predictive analytics.