tom911

It depends how the agent sets it up (and what you agree to). They can be set up to have the first segment clear no matter whether it's domestic or international, or they can be set up to only clear the international segment before clearing others. My preference has been to let the international segment clear first as I don't want to waste a systemwide if the international segment does not clear, but if the person that gave you these doesn't have a preference, and you have no status, you might as well take any segments that will clear.

duchy

Lots of people travel for pleasure at Thanksgiving........true BUT fewer people travel on business so in fact your chances may be better than during a normal business week as plenty of people travel up front for business but don't when it's at their own expense.

bdemaria

ASAP would make a difference for this sort of upgrade Let's say you put in the request today - 10 days from now revenue mgmt may look at the loads and open up a couple of seats - and voila, upgrade clears. Yes, other elites may result in you being lower on the list but if they aren't on the list now, it doesn't matter. The longer you wait to put yourself on the list, the greater the likelihood of elites placing themselves on the waitlist and therefore lessening the chances of your upgrade clearing.

PHL

Flight #2090: 11/16 seats open/unassigned
Flight #997: 22/37 seats open/unassigned
Flight #908: 29/37 seats open/unassigned
Flight #1381: 8/22 seats open/assigned

Your probably not going to get the upgrade on the domestic legs. But for the international legs, I think your chances are good, and not just because of the above yields.

It is a holiday period and full fare paying business travelers will be sparse. Then consider that the pecking order of Golds and Plats are only valid if someone else gave THEM a VIP upgrade. They don't VIPs. I suppose they could trump you if they are waiting for a mileage upgrade, though.

aaupgrade

Upgrades are currently available for the domestic legs (AA1390 -> A7 & AA1381 -> A3), so even more of a reason to book now as those may well disappear as Thanksgiving approaches. As previously mentioned you should have no problem clearing the international segments for your travel dates as those flights will be very light with business travelers. When you and your friend book, they apply his/her eVIPs to your reservation and confirm the upgrades for your domestic legs and wait list you for the international segments. Good luck.

jkb76

thanks.. what does A7 and A3 numbers mean though?

gemac

Hi, jkb76. Welcome to the AA forum. Thanks for doing the search first. You point out one of the problems with our forum. Since we do not discourage the posting of incorrect information, we often get contradictory information in a thread. The best way of sorting this out is to know through long experience who posts correct information and who posts whatever they can dream up. This takes a long while, though, and in the interim, knowing who to believe can be very difficult.

While there is no foolproof method to use in the interim, the thread you linked is instructive. In this thread, as in many others on this forum, the most knowledgable member, the one who posts only rock solid information, may be identified by the word "suspended" in his profile in the upper left corner of his posts, immediately below his Flyertalk handle. While it is not universally true that suspended members post the truth and active members post information that they pull out of their behinds, it is way ahead of whatever truth detector is in second place. In that particular thread, you can absolutely rely on the information posted by the suspended member Vasantn.

jkb76

thanks gemac. i definitely understand what you are saying. heck, i dont even trust most of the stuff i read in wikipedia

but i was wondering if you can help me understand something: why would i put more trust into somebody who has been suspended from the forum? dont you get suspended/banned from a forum when you dont play nice and do something naughty? while i maybe new to this particular form, i am not new to forums in general (and sadly have to admit have thousands of posts on some car related ones - yes, i have no life)

dbuckho

If a non-status person has had an eVIP applied to their reservation and it is still waitlisted prior to them heading to the airport - do they need to re-add themselves to the upgrade list once they arrive at the airport (similar to how the domestic upgrades work)? Also, will the EVIPs the ExPlat member called and had attached that put them on the waitlist still show in the record (in other words - will the gate agent will know where to pull the upgrade from if there is a seat available at departure)?

aaupgrade

A is the shared fare bucket for discounted first class tickets, and is also the fare bucket from which eVIPs and mileage upgrades are pulled for domestic upgrades from coach to first class on 2 class aircraft. The number following the A denotes the number of seats currently available for discounted first class or eVIP/mileage upgrades. See www.kvstool.com and www.expertflyer.com for more information on how to access this type of information.

Also see this link for more info on fare classes in general: http://flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php...ligibility_(AA)

Mark_T

Unless the number is 7 when it means '7 or more' so you will never see A8 for example as 8 remaining seats in that bucket would still show as A7.

jamienbaker

FWIW, I'd be sure to have your friend's AAdvantage number and PIN with you. I've never had difficulty gifting eVIPs to non-status friends domestically, but internationally it can be dicey. I was awakened at an ungodly hour by a friend in Paris, where the agent wasn't allowing her to use my eVIP. So I had to speak directly to the boarding agent and provide my information, before she would clear my friends. This may be the outlier, but you'd hate to get sssssooooo close to an upgrade, only to miss out at the last second. Good luck.