Using E-upgrades at the gate?
 

Flying Yvr to Yyz in a week and the flight is not fully sold out in economy but probably has approx 25 seats left on the 777. Business class is almost empty approx 20 seats open.

Would I be able to wait until the gate to see if they upgrade me without using e ups and if they don't go to the gate and ask to use my e ups? I am super elite.

I think the problem you run into there is that they won't op-up until the gate's closed, and you can't use eUps after it's closed.

...I say, having never tried to do either of those.

Yes you can, as long as there are still seats in J.

Or you could just have one of the nice people here check your flight to see if there's R space, in which case you could just eUp right now.

I thought it was pretty clear the goal was to aim for an opup, and only use eUps if necessary.

CC is correct of course. It's absolutely possible.

However, OP, your scheme falls apart because of the number of eUp requests filed by the huddled masses in the back of a tripple seven YVR to YYZ. Those will all clear first, and there will be a lot of them.

I'd practice the technique on your short haul flights and sacrifice the credits on this one.

If you risk it, let us know how it goes.

seeing as the upgrade requirement was just lowered it will only cost me 4 e ups to upgrade yvr to yyz on the 777... a no brainer : )

I'd be careful with your numbers and assumptions there. How do you know there are 25 seats left? How do you know there are 20 seats open in J?

At most all you can know is that there are 9Y and 9J seats left.

If you go online and try to book a seat it shows you what seats are open...

You can't go by that at all, there are many reasons why the seat map is not correct. Just because it shows 20 empty seats it does not mean there are 20 seats for sale. There could be 20 empty seats but only 1 left for sale.

Is one also at the mercy of how lazy the gate agent is?

Everything is a function of how lazy the AC staff is. After 2 million miles on AC metal and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, they still barely lift a finger... But I guess after all those coffee breaks and eating donuts, those chubby fingers become difficult to lift.

Yes, but I never run into problems with reasonable requests (like requesting an upgrade) once my BP is in front of them and they see my status.

I recently tried to upgrade someone else, at the gate, after boarding had begun, and had no pushback.

You have the magic touch, sir. Kudos. Maybe there is a comment about me in the system that says yyznomad sucks even though he spends a whackload on AC.

I may have a magic touch as well. Have had great success with upgrades at gate as well as changing flights on flex tickets without the change fee.

You sound very disgruntled with AC yet continue to "spends a whackload on AC" as well as fly them weekly if not daily. :confused:

Ok, you have been venting a lot! I want to try something. Let's both take the same flight and both make some kind of request at the same time and see what happens :).