potus18

I did a Wednesday departure and a Tuesday return last May also with ~20K rolling EQD at the time. We booked in early February and didn't clear or receive any EF alerts before day-of-departure. At T-0, we were no. 5/6 on LAX-SYD and no. 3/4 on SYD-LAX; neither of us cleared either route (no. 1 cleared on the outbound and no one cleared on the return).

Granted, we flew AA72 the day after Memorial Day (conveniently arriving 7am on the first workday of the week) so there was a bit more holiday traffic than usual, but still wasn't very encouraging. I've heard from colleagues and friends (EP and PPRO) that they've had better luck than me going down under, but for this Memorial Day we decided to skip the upgrade game and just book J.

Antarius

Thanks. I found a 500 USD round trip, so booked it on a whim for fun.

Outbound is J7 R7 D7 I7 with 19 open seats and the return is J7 R6 D6 I3 with 13 seats. About a month to go. So crossing my fingers.

potus18

Crossing mine for you too! 🤞

james318

Hopefully you are not on my flights! (Or, hopefully you are and we both gett the upgrade!)

shuuy

shuuy

Finsup72

#2 was probably offered the seat but passed as there was only 1 seat remaining and did not want to be separated from #3 . As a result, #4 got VERY lucky.

teemuflyer

bekkyboop

Hi there - EXP flying on 4/9 - have requested 4 SWUs. As of today there are 6 seats available (and one blocked). At what point does anyone think that they will release these seats for upgrades (will it be 24-48 hours prior or at the gate?). Has anyone had any experience with multiple (more than 2) SWUs being cleared? If so, at what point did they clear? Thanks so much!

teemuflyer

You'd have to have a very high rolling EQD to be in front of the line, but if everyone is on the same PNR, it's not impossible, but definitely improbable.

masamune

I just want to say that American's performance on this route is absolutely pathetic and has made me question staying with them long-term as an EXP. I flew this route March 10th and the flight was delayed until ~12AM or so. We boarded and sat, and sat, and sat with no announcements. I eventually get an e-mail notification on my phone saying that the flight is delayed until 9:50AM. Apparently the crew timed out, though other passengers were whispering to each other the next morning that the crew intentionally made it time out. Not sure I believe that part of it or not, but it does make you wonder how AA gives this flight less than 2 hours of buffer room for the crew to time out? I later looked on FlightAware and saw that this flight had to overnight all the passengers again on March 16th and again on March 26th. How does this airline manage to run any sort of schedule? The icing on the cake was later having to hunt down the hotel they put us at because they charged my personal card instead of the voucher.

JonNYC

Actually, AA's LAX-SYD has been doing pretty good lately, relatively speaking-- I mean it's definitely all relative, it's better than Qantas' on-time performance for the same route and no where near as good as AA's return SYD-LAX, so, maybe blame LAX.

Obviously the experience you describe absolutely stinks, but it aint data. If you feel something works better, not a reason in the world to take AA's flight, I know I wouldn't.

Reetmafreen

Beachfun71

I am on Flight 73 tomorrow. My miles+cash upgrade from paid PE to J just cleared... about 30 hours out. I picked 1H on the 787-9, but there other seats to choose from. Any suggestions?

Austin787

Any of the window seats in rows 2-7 are great. Rows 1 and 8 are close to the galleys, which may be noisy.