As far as I can tell there is zero evidence that an upgrade was actually sold out from under an elite passenger in this case, or in any systematic sense more generally. This is a perennial rumor on FT but I've never once seen it substantiated.

Then allow me to substantiate it for you because it happened to me in March. Upgrade cleared at exactly T-1 hour. Upgrade & new seat assignment appeared on my phone. Went to the AAgent in the club & got a new BP from her. By the time I got to the gate, the GA had sold the seat out from under me. When I complained about it to her, while showing her the freshly printed BP in my hand, her response was 'money comes first'.

Is that substantial enough for you?

I've also personally heard GA's, on the LUS side in PHX, announcing they were offering paid upgrades prior to clearing the upgrade list.

It's happening. Maybe not to you, but it is happening.

Did the GA sell the upgrade, or the seat? If someone paid full walk-up fare, then they had every right to get the seat instead of you.

Really? How about an award ticket? Or a paid I fare? Once you have a boarding pass I would expect an airline to honour it except for operational necessity and even then with politeness and possibly compensation.

Was upgraded for a LAX-SFO flight at T-105 today. Not upgraded on my AUS-LAX at the T-100 window, but 5 others were. So rumors that AA has eliminated the window appear to be premature.

I had an itn jfk-phx-las; las-clt-jfk (USAIRWAYS), all segments were upgraded, a few at T-72, T-48, T-24--better than many (pure)AA flts. lately.
I have more USAIRWAYS itns. coming up over the next 2 months--hopefully things will still be nice.:)

Seeing it both ways: Last week flying sfo ord on Saturday morning. Friday night F7 still no upgrade. It did clear of course at t-4. Today needed an unsched emergency flight ord-sfo and F RT was only 197 more than coach for both ways. I was sure glad the seats were available in F. In the end this new extreme tightening is great for EXPs but bad for everyone else.

I've been amazed at how easy it is to clear the upgrade list on US, even at the window. I was on a flight last night that was X9 three hours before departure.

Agreed. I'm flying RDU-CLT-MSP on Friday and I cleared both flights today. It looks as if the seat map is full on RDU-CLT too so that came as a real surprise.

Upgrades no longer clearing at 100 hours?
 

Upgrades no longer clearing at 100 hours for EXPs? This happened to my last three flights in the last week or so, and at least two of them are F7 and more than 12 seats unassigned, and during times that will be almost impossible to eventually end up being sold out...

Is this a coincidence or is this a thing that is happening right now?

Are you going through anywhere with weather (see many threads on this)?

Indeed, this has been discussed extensively over the years (so as you can surmise, it's by no means a new "thing that is happening right now"). It's really encouraged to search for existing threads on the same topic before starting a new thread.

For reference, here's a recent and quite long thread on this topic:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ow-elites.html

It is not weather related, and I thought this may be another AA enhancement or experiment... Sorry, I have not being used not clearing at T-100 and I am panicking...:p

It could be an experiment to see how many F seats they can sell to people who panic ;)

No, that won't work, I cannot panic enough to pay for domestic first...:p

I almost missed the upgrade the other day though for the first time as an EXP, on a flight booked 11 months out, I barely cleared at the gate (and the only one), that was nuts...