Hi Transpacker, welcome to FT. It really depends on a whole bunch of factors. I live in SF, supposedly one of the hardest places to get upgrades, and by having a bit of date flexibility and planning in advance, I not only used up all my SWU's this year, I upgraded more using miles, a total of 8 round trips.

These are to Europe (2), Japan (3), Hong Kong (1), and Australia (2). So I guess it has definitely not been hopeless for me!