I am an "infrequent" flyer (about 2 to 4 flights a year) and garner Aadvantage miles and loyalty points mostly by purchases. For this year I achieved executive platinum status and currently have almost 400,000 loyalty points. I almost never purchase economy class tickets and hope for an upgrade. But with EXP status and upgrade notification of 100 hours, I decided to purchase a coach seat (not award ticket) on a PHL to DTW flight. There were two business class seats still open and it was less than 100 hours to go. I figured I would buy the ticket and then, almost instantly, get upgraded due to my status and being inside the 100 hour time period. I mean, if there was another EXP ahead of me, the seats would be gone already, right?

Apparently I am quite ignorant about upgrades for those with AA status. On another thread I saw the following:

"The chance of 2 random EXPs on the same flight having the exact same LPs is statistically impossible". [unless both has 0 LP], in which case you should not expect an upgrade at all. It is difficult enough for EXPs with 250k LPs these days.

So apparently I misunderstood. I am guessing that in the run up to wheels up, AA is trying their darndest to get other already ticketed passengers, of any stripe, to purchase an upgrade to business, or are hoping that someone will come along inside the 100 hour period and just purchase the business class seat outright.

If that is the case, why claim that upgrade notifications may be as early as 100 hours before departure?

I also read of a case here where a passenger purchased a ticket. Then got an upgrade. Then, just before takeoff (boarding or wheels up, not sure which) had the seat taken away because a couple who had requested an upgrade together decided to split and take one upgrade, so they took the upgrade away from the first passenger and kicked him back to economy. (same seat or different, I don't know.)

This brings to mind an incident my father experienced back in the 1980s. He was commuting, weekly, from New York to GRR via Northwest Airlines. One day, while in his business class seat, he was told the seat had been assigned to another passenger and was asked to move. He refused. (This was at least 30 years before the Dr. David Dao United Airlines incident.) Staff came onboard and he was threatened with forced removal by law enforcement officers. Dad stuck to his guns and refused to move. They finally let him keep the seat. After he got home, he wrote a letter to Northwest Airlines and ended up getting some sort of compensation in the way of airline miles. Nowadays, I suspect they would have carried out the threat of forced removal and he would have been painted as the villain and maybe faced Federal charges.