They still process upgrades in advance (recently got ~3 days on DFW-SEA, and regularly get even further out on lightly-loaded regional routes), but they're definitely optimizing for revenue when they think they might still sell the seats, or just to have last minute seat availability.

I obviously wish they would just give out upgrades, but I always thought it was a bit insane from a revenue perspective that they would regularly upgrade up to F0 at 24h out up to last year or so. Never mind that it takes away from paying F pax when there's no other F seats available when your flight cancels, or you just want to SDC.

I'm ok if Alaska chooses to hold back upgrades but what I am not fine with is U space being available for multiple days within an elite upgrade window and not processing the upgrades when U space is open.

Totally agree. I would prefer they not upgrade until the gate if there's 2 or less F seats remaining. That way there's availability for those of us who book last minute or want a paid upgrade.

Tried this tonight on flights with U space available but the system tried to charge me so perhaps the self-upgrading feature is going away?

Elites/100K seem to be charged..

MVPG apparently there is no charge :/

I'm MVPG and it was showing a charge.

Upgrade processor would not process U space upgrade now at 120, 72, 24 window even for 100K, with U7 available at 120, U7 available at 48 and U2 at 24.

This is a really sad bug - I’m wondering with U space open, if anyone can just use a GGU to secure that space

you can, but need to up the fare.

This is simply not true. I had 2 upgrades at T-119 in the past two days.

It's obviously not every flight, but I've been seeing this in the past few days...U7 at 120 and nothing is getting processed...you also can't just grab it at T-24 like you could before... something is definitely more wonky than it was before.

corrected

'N' will do if you want to use GGU, which is much cheaper than K or M

Which route?

What I stated is not just true, when I chatted with the reservation to see if there is any issue with upgrade request, agents also encourage me to up the fare to use GGU.

So they see upgradeable U space available, and unfortunately those are not released for upgrade, most likely by design.

I've had observations that U spaces were likely retracted (U7 and all of sudden U0, where J remains 7)

Another interesting case is: U7 E0 -> U7 E5 (E is saver first class award) -> U2 all of a sudden (still no upgrade at U2 24 hours prior to flight, upgrade list #5 and #6 gone but the rest remains)

So apparently, they are trying their best to sell for cash, either in app upgrade, or up the fare and apply GGU, or saver award to help balance their mileage program.

I agree... something different from the "usual" upgraded processor shenanigans is definitely going on...U space is "stuck" for days, reservation agents can't do anything about it, and the upgrade yourself game at T-24 seems to have ended.