Originally Posted by
RatherBeInYOW
A 25K on an economy fare has effectively zero chance at an eupgrade to TYO, even on an off-peak day of the week in an off-peak month of the year. The OP needs to be buying a premium economy ticket to have any chance at all, and then at least has PY to fall back on if the upgrade to J fails.
Thats simply not true, many times I have seen Non Rev getting HND-YYZ flights. In fact a lot of upgrades for HND clear pre-gate.
On Oct 5, I was the only REV on the J upgrade list from PY with PY Lowest (and thats because I switched last minute from NRT-YUL).
I also know for sure AC already cleared PY to J eup because PY seats have opened up on that flight before the bids even got processed (it was full before)
My personal observation is that NRT/HND to YYZ often sell similar number of J seats, the biggest difference is that HND is 40J vs NRT 29J, so most of the times I have seen no one gets it on NRT but most rev on the J list from PY gets it in HND.
Originally Posted by
flyingcrooked
I don't really get what AC is doing with TATL R space. I get the idea that they don't want to make it available months ahead of time because (presumably) of the latitude redemption folks, but 6 days out from my LHR-YOW flight, EF says it's J9 C9 D9 Z9 P9 R0 O9 E9 A2 N0 Y9 B9 M9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T9 L9 K9. I get that anything can change, maybe the computer says a ton of last minute biz tickets will be sold for that flight, etc etc., but what is the point of advertising clearance windows as a status benefit if there is no R space even in a situation like this?
I know some people have reported seeing R space on TATL fares but I have not ever seen it on a single occasion since May 2024 on the routes I fly, even when they are P9 as in this example.
Maybe the idea is that having any R space at all, even within the clearance window, raises the latitude redemption problem (non-status pax can scoop up J seats for about 90k). And that going to the gate preserves the priority order that would have come through use of the clearance windows anyway. If so, I don't understand why the solution isn't to just raise the latitude redemption cost.
I think the intent is clear, choke out any companion pass holders who have likely leveraged this well.