Had one last week the other way, YVR-YEG 320 as I recall.

6 of 8, two upgraded at the gate, but someone no-showed, as they came on and brought #3 on the list up to the front.

I was #4.

I had one the other way as well travelling YYZ - EZE this week. Booked in PY - didn't get my UG from YYZ - GRU so still had 14D from GRU - EZE and boarded accordingly. There was a last-minute no-show in J and the GA came on board with a new boarding pass moving me to 1D....I hugged her and offered to send a fruit basket!

Had a positive experience with YBYL today.

AC1, 77W 36/39 J, 24/24 PY. Was 7th for J, 3 upgrading from PY, 4 from Y (including me). 4th for PY (check-in agent said 2 SE MM, 1 75k; I am 50k). In other words, I get cucked if nothing changes from this list.

Boarding comes, as expected, the 6 people infront of me clear, presumably 3 into J and 3 into PY. I am now first on both J and PY to be upgraded (obviously I only get a participation award at this point).

I board as part of zone 2, asked the agent if there's any use waiting for upgrade. Obvious answer is no, and he told me as much I was SOL. At this point I'm really hoping for a miracle but accept such is life.

Walking past the J minicabin, I see 10D is marked inop (might be important here). Walking into PY cabin, I see on cowtool my seat on the map showed as available in Y and thought "well that's weird, I'm clearly boarded and on the flight". Then I get a text saying waitlist cleared. Yay!

The relevant part here: a FA found me 15 minutes after I settled into my J seat and said she was looking for me to tell me I was upgraded. She couldn't find me in Y, so she assumed I got the notification that I was upgraded after I boarded.

So today, I boarded and didn't lose. Really happy I got upgraded from Y Flex to J as 50K (to me, an achievement given how full my flight was).

What I'm curious is whether the inop seat played a role here. I assume someone misconnected, and with the "you can only be upgraded once" policy I assume that there's no way anyone winning the upgrade to PY would be retroactively given J. Is this true?

​​​​​I'm also wondering, had J been 36/40, would I have ended up in PY, and whoever was 8th on the J upgrade list would have gotten my J upgrade instead?

I'm happy this worked out for you! But it's exactly YBYL for the 3 pax who got upgraded Y->PY.

You've found one problem with the way upgrades are managed. If you are in Y and get an upgrade into PY, there's no way for the system to then put you into a J seat that opens up - you can't get added to the upgrade list because you already cleared your upgrade, and it can't put you back into Y to upgrade you to J.

Depending on the GA, you may have already lost because however hard they try, they just can't make the system co-operate so you're stuck in PY while someone lower on the list gets the J seat. I have had GAs who understand that I would have been top of the priority list for the seat, fight with the system, then give up and write the J seat on my BP while putting the PY seat on an J-printed BP.

Thanks! So it seems the inop seat is actually why I got J, since if the scenario played out again but with 36/40, I would have been in PY and next person on the list after me would have gotten J.

Had any of the upgraded passengers from Y to PY stayed behind till end of boarding, would one have been retroactively upgraded to J, even though they've already been upgraded once? Or is there technically no possible way from a system POV unless there's a GA willing to manually scribble on the boarding pass?

Like I said, that depends on the GA. There is no way for the system to process that. So GA has to be willing for actual seat assignment to not match the printed manifest. I've had the GA board with me (they need to deliver the manifest anyway, and by this point everyone has boarded) to let the crew know that they reassigned me from PY to J.

Boarded early for luggage space. Business was sold out. Two no shows and they came and got me.

Damn - I was skeptical about this until today.

YYZ>YVR - #1 on the list after all the preceding upgrades processed - gave up and boarded since I had row 18 and didn�t really care that much about getting PY in a bid for J, and then saw that PY had 2 no shows - except I had wiped myself and boarded already�

Really thought a high traffic route like this wouldn�t have me get into PY or J but pleasantly surprised that I had a shot if I just waited.

YYZ-YVR, AC114 on Jan 5. Fully boarded, 40/40 J sold out, two people were upgraded from PY. They then upgrades 2 from Y to PY.
I was number 3/4 on the list so didn't make the cut here haha
Hopefully this is the standard and not the exception.

Was on AC 1023 last week. Was doing well on the J waitlist with 12 open seats until they cancelled one of the earlier flights and moved everyone over. Out of our party of 3, only one got the upgrade to PY (me) and my companions were the next 2 in line. Three of the PY upgrades didn't show so if we had all waited we would have gotten the upgrades. It would have been apprecaited if the concierge came onboard to move the others since PY went out 3 seats empty but it was a day from hell for them with delays & cancellations. And after a 12hr delay ourselves I wasn't in the mood to inquire or argue. But a textbook definition of YBYL.

Easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but it's precisely on those types of days that you can reasonably speculate that IIROPS are going to interfere with a lot of people's schedules and the chance of no shows is dramatically increased.

delete

In my example above I was on a different PNR than my companions. On one occasion before when I was on the same PNR with a companion with J1, the gate agent paged me to ask whether we would like to split or stay together.

Based on my experience a couple of weeks ago if you get upgraded your spouse should keep her/his seat. (In my case it was Y and J. Yes I swapped with her. My Y seat ended up being vacant. I may have gotten the better part of that deal, but that's going off topic). You get the new PNR when upgraded.

And from what I remember upthread you can go to the agent prior to the list being run. If there is only 1 J available they can remove your request.

Interesting one tonight. AC854, #2 on the J list, booked 39/40 so I don�t clear. Take my PE seat, when announcement is made about boarding complete, look at the app and there are 2 no shows. Ask the GA standing at the boarding door, she goes and asks and I am told no, the flight is closed. I reply that they are not supposed to do that until they clear the upgrade list. I�m told that a manager will come and explain it to me. After a few minutes, I�m told that they will re-open the flight and process the upgrades. Myself and another person got upgraded as a result. Always pays to check and ask I guess.