All the reports are that these are offered to non-elite passengers, once all elite passengers have cleared (or will clear) upgrade into a flight.

So as an EXP, you would never be offered this, since you would already have a free upgrade coming.

I'm gonna start saying WFBF-BWFAA. (Want F, buy F but why fly AA)

My upgrade percentage has dropped substantially since early June on 738/321 metal. ORD-LAX and ORD-PHX have been hit the worst, but several other routes have been problematic. Many 738/321 flights are F5 or less at 7 days out, and those flights rarely clear even though I book pretty far in advance and rarely travel Monday AM or Thursday PM.

I'm losing out to people who look at the e500 sticker price and the fact that YUP gets double EQM, and have just decided to buy A. Can't blame American on that.

But.... I don't have to stay, either. My upgrade percentage will continue to drop, to the point where I'm finding myself having to YUP out of pocket on longer flights when I really need to get work done.

And if that's going to happen, I may as well fly Delta. Cheaper YUP fares on a wide variety of routes which I fly. Better route network out of RDU, where I will be spending a lot of time. Better lounges. MDW instead of ORD for many flights (and there are very few DL elite out of MDW...) DL Shuttle on ORD-LGA, where i don't care if I don't upgrade if I get the bulkhead on the 175.

So last night, I put in for a status challenge to DL Platinum. I'll get most of the way there by moving a January PE IAD-LHR from BA to VS and a BOS-OAK one-way from AA to DL and doing a YUP. The rest I'll make on easy MDW-DTW-DCA type routes.

Sometimes I'll have to add a connection, but AA has controlled capacity so much that I find myself sometimes having to connect anyway on AA to get a reasonable price.

Have had less than 25% success this year, but I live in DFW with a HUGE percentage of EXPs.

I know just purchase first directly. It's not usually that much more expensive than a refundable economy, and I have not been bumped from FC once this past year.

Better to pay for what you want, given the current upgrade-hostile environment!

As of year end 12/31, me and +1 will have a total of 42 upgrade able segments, for which we succeeded on 35, with 5 segments still pending/unaccounted for late NOV and DEC already booked flights. With that said, with 35/42 valid upgrade segments we're at 83.3%. The 2 current missed upgrades where 2 LAX-ORD Saturday trips on May, no idea why, ended up at 1st & 2nd on the UPG list for both of them.

For 2017, my idea is to minimize the MR factor, and actually do weekend trips in Y+, PE, YUP, etc, provided the difference between is not substantial. AA YUP or F pricing is not stable enough (2x Y max) on our regular routes for us to bite, besides, due to other factors our flying 2017 will be more as a free agent on best route/pricing. In the end, I will pay for and fly for F, provided the price is acceptable.

FWIW, and this may have been reported elsewhere, but I checked my non-elite mother in law in for a short domestic flight tomorrow on the iPhone app and was not offered a LFBU. However, when I logged in from a computer to print her boarding pass, I saw an option to purchase the LFBU. Oddly, such an option could not be found on the app (at least I couldn't find it). YMMV.

most likely the upgrade was not available when using the app. But the app does offer the upgrades when available

I have an upgrade request in for CLT-LAS on this coming Monday (Nov 7) that has never cleared; there are 10 seats left open in F. Am I likely to clear at any point as a Gold? (with 500 mile electronic upgrades)

I requested an upgrade from JAX-LGA in September and it didn't clear until the day before. And that was with the entire cabin empty (I was the only one who paid to upgrade). This one is almost empty cabin.

T-23, Saturday flight, flight is F7 with 8 seats empty (MCE 1/3 full, plane half full), EXP booked 5 months out, so probably first on the upgrade list, and my upgrade has not yet cleared......????

I checked in and it says I am now on the airport upgrade list, was that a mistake, does it mean that I will not get an auto-upgrade in the next couple of hours, as sometimes they would clear at T-20 or something like that?

Remember, is using the seat map, all you know is there are 10 unassigned seats, not open for ticketing/upgrades. Checking the flight to see if it is F7 for booking, then there's a good chance of an upgrade. Also, check the MCE seats, if they are full, then probably a fair number of elites that may be ahead of you (by status). Today, it' all a crap shoot (pun intended) as to what AA will do.

You could still clear up to T-4 then you would actually gone on the airport list. The Mobil App will begin to show the list at T-4.

Ok, that's what I thought, I was just confused by the wording that I am already on the airport list. I am not really worried about not clearing on this one, even if I am the only one who clears, but the fact that AA is trying hard to sell my upgrade is very upsetting, geez...

DEN-based EXP here, likely fight fewer elite travelers in Denver than other parts of the system (minus DFW/DEN on Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons) but just had 2 of 4 segments on next trip to ELP via PHX clear at the 100 hour mark. It does work sometimes...

As a gold, the earliest you can ever expect to clear is 24 hours before departure.

Adding some more fuel to this endless speculation fire.

Wednesday around 5:00PM I booked EWR-CLT-ORD-EWR for Friday morning coming back Friday evening.

My ORD-EWR upgrade cleared before the ticket was even issued, and before I got the notification that they charged my credit card. EWR-CLT showed 2F available when I booked. I ended up number 1 on the upgrade list and was the only one to clear out of about 7. CLT-ORD had 2 F open when I booked. I was number 7 on the list for 1 seat at the gate. That is the lowest I've ever seen myself on a list, but I get it last minute Friday morning hub to hub. One person cleared at the gate.

Thought it was pretty cool to clear the one leg pretty much at booking.