mjfink

Well, I called US for me trip scheduled for next week to get the bad news, FC has been totally sold, no upgrade for me. This is CLT-LHR May 27th, if anyone wonders/cares. This ticket was booked about 8 months ago and the SWU was waitlisted at that time.

I spoke with an EP agent today and she was surprised that I had never missed an upgrade using a SWU before. Well, I haven't, until now, ever missed one, however, I'm a legacy US air guy, and the overseas upgrades for Chairman members were "as good as gold", they cleared almost immediately, and I could find lots of flights. Looking at my city pairings (and using a few different options, DFW-LHR, PHL-LHR and CLT-LHR and over different departure days), I NEVER saw a single flight that has SWUs available. Not a single one for the overseas leg (which, of course, is where SWU's become valuable).

So, a few questions.

1) Is it really typical that a seat booked 8 months in advance and a SWU waitlisted at that time doesn't clear? Are they really selling the entire F cabin out on most overseas flights now?

2) There are 2 people on this flight (me and my wife) should I have split the PNR; is the problem that they only release 1 seat at a time and therefore a lot people got upgrades, but I kept getting skipped because I needed 2 seats?

3) Should I switch airlines <seriously>? The biggest perk, by far, of being a Chairman/EP to me has always been taking a vacation overseas each year in business/first. If that's gone (or just very unreliable), should I consider moving to Delta (and dealing with ALT airport, the real reason I don't fly them!).

4) Are people playing games with the system? Are some of those F seats booked fully refundable by the same person who's in C with a SWU who plans to cancel the F booking 90 minutes before departure? I just can't believe they actually sold the entire cabin out.

And, to my topic, over the past year, I've only had 1 SWU clear (DFW-HNL) and this is my 3rd miss. I always fly with my wife when using SWU's, but, man, that's a really poor percentage. If I can only count on 25% of the time, they are pretty much worthless to me, I'd book a business class ticket using miles for my vacations and forget about the "SWU game".

Any insight would be appreciated, I'm really annoyed that this UG didn't clear, my primary reason for this trip was to burn some SWU's; I wouldn't have booked it at all if I wasn't using them. I'll live, of course, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the trip, but AA SWU's seem to be a lot less valuable than the old US Air international upgrades.

VickiSoCal

Do you have and use Expertflyer?

mjfink

I used to, however I stopped because it never seemed to find upgrades faster than just logging in every day and looking on the website (once the AA site started showing "SWU available" on the flights.

If you have it, I'm curious, can you find any SWU availability on any of those routes a month out? I've tried damn near every combo I can think of on the AA site and can NEVER (and in NEVER, I've never seen a SWU available for a flight to LHR from any east coast departure city for any dates this year) find them.

mjfink

Sorry to respond to my own post, but any chance, if I find a SWU using another city pairing (likely MIA to LHR) that I can call up and get them to change my flight and waive the fee? I've heard of other's getting them to do that; just wondered if there was any precedent for that kind of thing.

Often1

Improved economy, less capacity, less competition and more paid F/J means less general availability.

You are traveling on the Friday of a holiday weekend and "competing" against however many thousands of others hoping to use a SWU on a TATL flight for exactly the same purpose as you. That simply is not a high percentage shot. It won't be any higher on UA or DL either.

What you are hoping for won't be found in the dark any more.

arollins

I think your second comment is key to all. By not splitting, you need 2 seats released/available at the same time, the odds of that happening on some routes are minimal. Chances are you are getting skipped and the seat goes to the next "single" traveler. I had a similar situation on a trip to WAW, that I booked for my spouse and I for Thanksgiving last year. Ticket was bought in January, SWU called and requested same day, I also had the ticket split. My spouse clears all segments on August, I only cleared the outbound. Day of flight, I was #5 on the upgrade with one seat left. How can that be? Last year, my upgrade % domestic/int'l was 76%, my spouse was at 67%. We are both EXP and travel together. This past weekend we both missed out first comp upgrade on a LAX-ORD flight.
Upgrades are getting harder, AA is getting smarter at selling the seats. Book early, play the upgrade lottery, or pay for it. Good luck.

VickiSoCal

I think you need to refine your strategy if your failure rate is this high.

I almost always have SWU's clear.

I use EF to find the flight with Max J availability and book 10+ months out.

I set alerts for C on all flights interested in.

I split our PNR's.

I call the minute I get a C alert.

It is not as easy as it used to be, but it can be done. Our whole family (four peopel) got SWU's to LHR and SCL last year and this year again to LHR)

rjw242

As many of us can attest, booking early is nowhere near a sure thing. On a route like DFW-HKG, even if you book 330 days out, you're going to have a hard time upgrading on a Friday or Saturday. Being strategic about the days, dates, and routes you fly will help a lot more (though again, it's no guarantee).

For instance, on trips to SE Asia I've never cleared a SWU when traveling via the DFW/HKG route. Once I started booking them via NRT, I cleared 100% of the time.

mjfink

Oh absolutely, I knew this was going to be a tough one; that's why I booked so far ahead and put myself on the upgrade list way early. What I'm really curious about is why I missed it; did they really sell every J seat? Or did they upgrade a lot of people on EVIPs but never release 2 seats at a time? Or do a bunch of EP's have refundable tickets in J that they are going to cancel the day of to try and increase their chance of an upgrade?

I can't imagine there way anyone booked in before me using an EVIP, the flight was only "open" for a few weeks before I booked it and used by cert to try to upgrade. Which would imply that all of J was actually sold, or, alternately, that they released seats one a time from inventory for upgrades.

rjw242

Of those three, I'd say #2 is very likely (maybe not "a lot", but some); #1 may have happened; #3 almost certainly not (and if someone tried this they'd quickly find themselves in hot water).

mjfink

Sadly, I know someone who uses this strategy almost exclusively for his EVIP upgrades. I suspect it happens more than we (and certainly more than AA) would like to acknowledge. He told me his strategy to keep from getting caught (which I won't share here), but, suffice to say, he's never been burned and was laughing at me today when I told him my situation.

My only hope is that there's still one seat left, so, if someone is trying this and I'm next on the UG list, there's a chance when they cancel their dummy reservation, I'll jump in front of them. Which would be justice well served.

mjfink

Also, forgetting about my current situation for a minute, I'm browsing through the AA site looking for any EVIPs that would clear on this route for ANY day and can't find a single one. So it seems it's upgrade lottery for SWU's where with USair, it really was "just make sure you book early and you'll get it". Which, IMHO is pretty crappy, I never use SWU's for business travel (I book in J for that), so their only use to me is for vacation travel; if I can't confirm them, I'll use miles instead and not worry about trying to use the EVIPs. But, if AA is reading, the biggest reason I flew with USair so much was to use those upgrades; it was a trip overseas per year for me and my wife in J. The way it currently looks, I'm not going to be relying on them anymore and will use miles (best case of AA) and may status match away from them and see if someone else has some better benefits for a high-rev flyer.

arollins

You are also flying on a holiday weekend, lots of traveler going out as well. Also there have been some really BUS/First class fares in the past that may have encourage others to booked into BUS. This past week BA had BUS/FIRST class fares to Europe for around $2500 or so, combine that with the current extra RDM miles promo, AARP, chase rebate, topcashback rebate, and that fare comes down to $1800, while coach was around $1400 or so.

On the flipside, just as soon as the BUS/FIRST class fare sale was over, DL and UA where offering coach fares to similar destinations for $500-700. This tend to encourage others to book and hope for the upgrade.

You need to adjust your booking parameters accordingly and be very pro-active. Do not rely on the AA website, but rather expertflyer. Heck, there have been times that I've actually called the EXP desk to confirm SWU availability on a particular route, if no, then I asked for my 2nd, 3rd option.

JonNYC

AA is very familiar with this strategy, but it's very rarely used as the who do it almost all get caught-- as your find will soon enough.

And, not only do you lose your AAdv acct, they bill you for the inventory spoil-- dozens of thousands of dollars.

He'll get caught soon if he keeps it up-- the capture-rate on this is incredibly high. He only *thinks* he's outsmarting them, it's only a matter of time (if he's even really doing it.)

Anyone who attempts this is an absolute fool.

rjw242

Yes it would.

However, I stand by my assertion that it's almost certainly not what happened, in that you were suggesting that "a bunch of EP's" use this scam. Does it ever happen? Sure. But there have been several instances of people getting caught for this. It would be extremely difficult to evade even a moderately-competent analyst, no matter how "clever" your friend's scheme is.