At the end of the year and ready to burn my 4 certificates, not surprisingly, not a single flight has U availability in 2021...

There actually is U availability though...
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...t-pdx-sea.html

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...817203f377.png

Thanks for the link!!! Recently I saw more and more transcon First priced at $289 in 2021... seems like directly buying a ticket will be a better option...

That seems to be the big hang-up now that U space is coming back. I/P fares are so cheap!

It is, there is no question about that. The I fares throughout the system right now are insanely low through next year.

Has there been any such announcement or success, even unofficially? Along with others in the thread, I also have 4 GGUs expiring on the turn.

I see some U space SEA-ORD & PDX-SEA-ORD in February. The issue is, however, that using GGUs on Eligible fares will cost a little more out of pocket than paying for F outright. I don't think that will last forever but for Q1 2021 it will be interesting.

Even with a slight premium for the GGU eligible fare, it can still make sense, especially for a more complex itinerary, if you have a companion certificate, that can't be used to purchase F directly. You are only paying the Premium once & the GGUs will move you & your companion into F. Of course, you need to have MVPG+ which you should have if you earned them.

I have 4 expiring and my partner 8. Not too concerned though, together we have 22 expiring at the end of 2021.

James

I have eight expiring end of the year and I suppose will get four more. If I book a flight and then cancel in a month I think I get them back but I can’t find a single flight anywhere with U space availability from Portland.

I just got an expert flyer alert of (2) U space on my SEA-PVR flight in Feb. I had booked it with a companion coupon at the lowest main fare. Upgrade cost me a total of $61 for two of us, so they are out there! Also my 2021 GGU are now in my account.

Seems like they've tightened back up on U space availability....I'm looking at mid/long-haul flights to just about anywhere (IAD, HNL, LIR, MSY, JFK, PHL, etc.) and U space is tough (almost impossible) to find.....almost all of it seems to be relegated to flights up and down the west coast.

Data point: MVPG, flown 6 flights to/from SAN in the past 5 months - 4 to/from Hawaii - have been upgraded on every flight on a discounted Y fare.

Not happy about losing GGUs at the end of 2020, but under the circumstances, why bother? GGUs typically require a higher fare bucket, consider myself well ahead of the game.

4 new GGUs were deposited in my account at the beginning of 2021, I fully expect to qualify for at least MVPG - if not 75k this year - so all is well.

More unhappy about losing credit card companion passes.

Lol...my last two missed upgrades as an MVPG were to/from SAN (FLL-SAN and SAN-PDX). Since when did the companion passes go away? Did I miss something?

The lack of U space combined with AS' recent customer unfriendly policies during covid is mind blogging. AS has made significant schedule / route changes to around 80% of my long haul flights (e.g. 4-6 hours) with some adding new routing with overnights in SEA, different rates or turning a simple 5-6 hour non-stop into 19 hours. Thats bad enough, but recently when this hit flights where I used a GGU to upgrade AS has made a big deal of how they werent going to honor the upgrade anymore unless there is space on all flights where I requested a date change (e.g. move 1-2 days to get back on a nonstop) due to their schedule change. Its been pulling teeth to get them to finally see the light of how badly that policy would work since returning an expired GGU to my account is more than useless.

Hopefully this resolves itself soon, but just another thing to deal with.

What dates are you looking at? It really doesn't make sense to open U space on "placeholders." More often, I am seeing upgrade fares that are higher than paid F. I had 8 GGUs get sucked into a black hole on January 1st but I still have 18 left, 10/2021 8/2022. My 3 unused AL Passes were extended until June 30th, 2021 but somehow, I had 8 more added; now I have 11 but no real use for them.

I was able to use 4 for flights before Christmas on a companion certificate, (that is really the only time I use them) 1 each for SEA-LAX-SJO & 1 each for SJO-LAX-SEA.

James

Haven't been able to use companion passes - combination of covid travel deferral, cheap fares, bogo promos making them virtually worthless.