mvoight

Yep, just as it is often easier for J pax to upgrade to F, than from Y to J.

platbrownguy

+1

LINDEGR

It is both ludicrous and sickening in my humble opinion but yes AA would rather have its employees in F (for which it gets nothing) than performing a rolling upgrade of J customers to F to allow more Y passengers to get upgraded to J (for which it can recognize revenue from customers using miles and cash, SWU's). Sad!

enpremiere

I'm with you on that one but they don't seem to have found a way to quickly and efficiently monetize their premium cabin upgrades on routes where this happens at the same level as BA does. Flying on a U award ticket, BA offered a cash upgrade to F at check in and repeated it to almost all J passengers to the extent that the relatively empty F cabin filled with J pax and even the outbound pilots were relegated to J instead of F.

Shrpchef

This was my thought exactly. So the next NOOB question is Why does UA believe its best to auto upgrade to FC/BC whereas AA throttles you by using a ridiculous sticker program??

Science Goy

"stickers" (aka 500-mile upgrades) cannot be used on international flights like HKG-LAX. Only systemwide upgrades or miles+copay are applicable.

shadymg

So this JUST happened with a colleague of mine traveling LAX-HKG where she showed me the upgrade list and there were many people significantly lower in the order who cleared, where as she did not (she was attempting to use SWU, on an Economy Plus ticket).

Did not think much of it, and then last night happens for me--I was #4 on the upgrade list (25 long), and the ticketing agent mentioned that 20 people still had not checked into business class, so the chances were looking good.

Long story short, #1 , 2 & 3 all cleared....I did not. BUT, #1 6 & 17 cleared (same last name), #1 8 cleared, and #21 cleared.

Does anyone have any idea how this happens? I can't recall seeing this, and it makes me wonder what's the point of the upgrade list ranking if upgrades aren't distributed in order...

Long Train Runnin

J to F is on the bottom of this list.

Lots of threads about this.

UAPremierGuy

If this is a 3-class aircraft, keep in mind that people can upgrade for J to F as well, so the upgrade list often does not make sense on AA's app. It is not nearly as user-friendly as UA's or DL's.

Also, AA doesn't have "Economy Plus," so I'm not sure what you are referring to here.

Science Goy

I think I've seen on here that nonrevs can upgrade from Y to F, so that may account for #21 .

shadymg

Sorry, meant "Premium Economy"

Okay, so in the future....don't pay too much attention to the actual list number. MAN....annoying lol. Just need a higher cost original ticket?

guess I won't have any chance at my return leg on the 19th, since my round trip ticket was just $1000 (Class P?). Dayumm

Science Goy

The fare paid on an individual flight doesn't directly affect your upgrade priority; it's based on your rolling 12-month Elite Qualifying Dollar (EQD) spend with AA.

But if by "higher cost original ticket" you mean buy J and request a SWU to F, then yes, you probably have a better shot at getting it

shadymg

lol, thank you. Okay, so then (based on my understanding of wiki on chances) in order for these people to have skipped me, they must have been: Executive platinum as well, been using an SWU or miles to upgrade, and then boom have been EQD for the last 12 mos?

So if all that is correct, then what kind of magic are they using for the original Upgrade List order then? Because there's no way that person above should be #21 if I'm #4 , right? I know I'm overthinking this....haven't gotten much sleep (damn you premium economy lol)

Science Goy

The confusing thing is there are multiple types of upgrades on this flight (economy to business, business to first, and (potentially) displaced passengers from other flights as well as employee non-revenue tickets), but AA concatenates them all into a single upgrade list. So it can look like upgrades are clearing from random parts of the list, when actually (for instance) you're seeing the top 3 on the Y->J list clear, and the top 2 on the J->F list (starting at position 18 on the combined list), and so on.

ryan182

This is something that UA actually does (or did) well, they displayed the Y->J and J->F lists separately. Also the agent that told you 20 people had "not checked in" gave you false hope as that's not a valid metric, especially if you were there early, as not checked in != available seats it just means people who had bought tickets had not yet checked in.