SFO777

SJC-ORD
Breakfast
December 27, 2010
AA 828
7:30A-1:45P
737-800 (no Wi-Fi)
Only 10 of 16 seats occupied.

Choice of Special K or Boursin Cheese Omelet. The omelet was pretty good although a couple of DL sausage links would have been nice. @:-)

AAerSTL

Yet the Golden ones continue peddling how the San Francisco Bay Area is full of elites and attracts significant premium heavy traffic. There you have it-10/16 AFTER elite upgrades and NRSAs.

Its amazing because if it was full you'd have the regular suspects kvetching because of difficulty obtaining UGs.

sts603

On a flight on December 27th. The middle of the holiday. When cancellations abounded to many places in the northeast. I don't think its a representative sample.

demkr

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.654 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104)

Ex-SJC is not ex-SFO either...more of the issue is that regardless of cabin load we are having to wait a longer time on flights for UGs to clear-applying to me solely on flights to or from SFO have not cleared at T100 since August, regardless of flight load

MAH4546

The Bay Area is extremely elite heavy. I'm sure you know very well that one flight during the holidays - a very slow business travel period - is no indication otherwise.

I was on AA 280 (3-class LAX-MIA) last week. Ten empty seats in business class on an elite-heavy route that has the highest average load factor in AA's domestic system (93%). Would you like to make the case that AA doesn't have elites in LA and Miami?

SFO777

That would be my guess. I can't recall a single SFO or SJC flight in the past couple of years where I've seen an empty First seat.

Exactly, as even with this light load, my UG didn't clear at T-100.

AAerSTL

I agree and know full well this is not representative of travel patterns from the Bay Area, I was just giving our SFOers a hard time. Although this topic has been exhausted in other threads, these posters nonetheless continue to create new threads and highjack existing threads to discuss reductions and changes affecting SFO & SJC. I just thought it would be a nice opportunity to point out UGs aren't so difficult, and FWIW last time I flew to SFO (via BOS return via LAX) both cleared at T-100 although the aircraft was completely full. I'm flying out next month via ORD to visit a friend and don't expect anything to be remarkably different from previous trips in respect to upgrades.
What difference does it make? You still get to fly F when you paid Y. I flew SLC-BOS with a non-elite friend earlier this month on T fares and was upgraded midnight (Eastern) the day before the flight. All ended well and we had a pleasant flight. I could understand being frustrated if they didn't clear, and would advise you to fly UA if that's important to you.

KtownTraveler

Ten seats. Wow. I've missed the UG on AA280 four times this year.Is there a site listing flight-specific load factors for AA? I guess I thought that information was probably proprietary.

MAH4546

Load factors are not proprietary and airlines are required to report the information to DOT, which makes it public, but very difficult to extract at http://www.bts.gov.

KtownTraveler

Thanks for the link. There's a lot of cool information there. I see how to select the airline. And the origin or the destination, but not both. Thus it's not clear to me how to how to select a specific flight or even a particular route. Maybe I'm being dense. It wouldn't be the first time.