photodave

I've been monitoring AA56 on Expertflyer for the last few days since I had to book a last minute trip to London for next week. It seems that on this route, C inventory is generally being released between 6 and 48 hours out, depending on load. Weekend flights are busy, with tomorrow and Sunday already at J2, but midweek flights are far less crowded in the J cabin. I'm quietly confident that my request for Monday will clear between tomorrow and Sunday night/Monday morning.

Mashatu

Newbie to this forum but wanted to get opinions on my chances of my waitlisted SWU clearing. 01 March flight 51 LHR-DFW, Y to J. I am EXP. This is Saturday travel via 77W and international connecting. J has only 16 open seats per seat map and MCE is almost completely full. Booked and waitlist 3 weeks ago. My question is : are my chances potentially better for SWU clearing since my 01 March travel is after the 28 February expiration of some SWUs?

TokinaMaso

Does the class of purchase trumps the time of purchase? Let's say I purchase deep discount economy now and request a SWU, then someone later books full economy and also requests SWU. Bot are EXPs, which one would have higher priority - the one who purchased earlier or the one who bought more expensive economy tkt?

photodave

Inventory actually opened up yesterday evening (Friday). Expertflyer for the win!

vasantn

In theory, Y and B fares trump time of request. All other fare buckets are equal.

TokinaMaso

Thanks, that makes sense. I thought maybe H, K, M, L, W, V would have higher priority than G, Q, N, O, S or even more segmented. I guess Y and B are not that often purchased and then upgraded using SWU, because of the much higher price and relatively low difference with business class fare, that would be a waste of SWU and (not earned) bonus miles on paid business fare.

iadp

I'm 16/16 on successful SWUs all from the US<>NRT,HND,PVG,PEK in the past 18 months. 6 cleared at booking the rest cleared pre T-24. Never fly transatlantic.

On an unrelated note, I'm 12/22 on OpUps on CX from Y+ to J long haul in the past 18 months CX is just baiting me to make the switch

sinanju

Last year, I don't think any of my SWUs cleared at the time of booking. However, all eventually cleared. I managed to use 10 of them last year.

makfan

Yes, although some companies don't allow any sort of premium tickets to be purchased, no matter how little the difference.

Stripy

Is there any reason we have a new thread for this discussion? Shouldn't we have it in the Upgrade Success thread (below) so users can find all the info they need in one place?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...solidated.html

Time traveller

Good question. This thread seems to focus more on SWU clearing on the international routes, whereas the other thread seems to be heavy on domestic sticker upgrade clearing, although there are some scattered international SWU clearance discussion.

JTK

Another data point, Flight 153 ORD-NRT departing on 2/7, ticketed 1/9, cleared 2/5 and the seatmap shows 24 open seats. First time my connecting flight to ORD cleared before my SWU.

handspring088

I had almost the exact same experience. Except, I was #1 on the list and I didn't clear. Unfortunately, the thin margin between using an SWU and ending up in the ten across 77W Y section is a gamble I am not usually willing to take.

NiceLanding

I've successfully used two dozen SWUs in less than two years. Most were waitlisted, but I've only had two attempts that failed. The first was on the last day in February last year, when it seemed that everyone was truing to use an expiring upgrade. The other was a flight switch less than 48 hours in advance (although I've also had a couple successes on even shorter flight changes). Overall I'm very confident of success, but would prefer earlier clearing for seat and meal selection.

One point I've yet to figure out: How much priority does a through passenger really get? Does it move you ahead of all non-through passengers (still within your own level, I presume)? This feature might justify a deliberate connection, rather than a non-stop, for a last minute booking.

Antarius

Waitlisted on AA50 and AA51 on Feb 17th and Feb 28th respectively. Both J cabins are now about half full . Purchased the tickets a month and a half ago when J was very empty (6 seats sold) and MCE was 60% full.

Hoping for an upgrade. Anyone have any thoughts?