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Chances of Upgrade Clearing and Availability (2018 master thread)

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Old Dec 17, 2017, 12:15 pm
FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides
Last edit by: aztimm
Chances of Upgrade Request Clearing
NOTE: Be aware of recent (20 May 2017) upgrade priority changes.

"New Upgrade Priority as of 20 May 2017

(Upgrades were prioritized by elite status and then time of request until 20 May 2017)
  • Elite status
    1. Concierge Key
      • Executive Platinum
        • Platinum Pro
          • Platinum
            • Gold
    • Upgrade type
      1. Miles and copay award upgrades and systemwide upgrades (SWU)
        • 500 mile upgrades on purchased tickets
          • 500 mile upgrades on upgrade eligible awards)

      • Elite qualifying dollars in the past 12 months
        • Booking class
          • Time of request"


See Upgrade Priority Changes to Status, Rolling 365 Day EQD Spend May 20 2017

Link to Gary Leff, View From the Wing 16 May 2017

Updated 17 Dec 2017 by aztimm
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Chances of Upgrade Clearing and Availability (2018 master thread)

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Old Mar 24, 2018, 5:01 pm
  #181  
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: KHOU/KIAH
Programs: AA EXP | Marriott Bonvoy Titanium| Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 11,236
What day? That matters a lot too.
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Old Mar 24, 2018, 5:19 pm
  #182  
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Arizona
Posts: 5,689
Fri,Sat,Sun departures
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Old Mar 24, 2018, 6:28 pm
  #183  
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: SFO/DFW
Programs: AA-EP, A3*G, UA*S
Posts: 290
Cleared for this (Saturday) morning on the SFO-PHL with the A330. Plat Pro, confirmed at about T-26.
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Old Mar 24, 2018, 6:55 pm
  #184  
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: TUS
Programs: AA Plat, Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 552
OKC-CLT A319
CLT-DCA CRJ900
Sunday morning flights
Cleared at T-48 as Plat
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Old Mar 30, 2018, 9:08 am
  #185  
PHL
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Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: PHL, NYC
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ORD-PHL on an A321, at T-24, there was J2 showing in EF so predictably I did not get upgraded (as Gold). At T-13, I did get the upgrade email and EF showed J1. My rolling 12 month spend is about $5000 as Gold. Late last year, after a period of sporadic flying my Gold upgrades were rare since my rolling EQD was low. Now they are coming notably more often, with some pleasant surprise.
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Old Mar 30, 2018, 11:27 am
  #186  
 
Join Date: Jan 2017
Location: COU
Programs: AA EXP, Bonvoy Ambassador, Hertz PC
Posts: 499
My 1Q results: pleasantly surprising

Hi all. Just wanted to give a data dump for all my flights in the first quarter. I'm EXP, with an estimated rolling EQD of maybe 17k (2018 YTD 5700, 2017 total 16.5k), and I tend to take midcons from my regional home airport through DFW and ORD, with a few oddballs thrown in. Particularly proud of that IAH-LAX-SYD special fare through the Chase portal for <$1200.

All in all I've been super happy with my upgrade success ever since they changed the list order last May. I tend to book late, and regional tickets are expensive; before the change I got the upgrade maybe 30% of the time, and as you can see here I'm at about 80% this year. In any case, without further ado:

Date Depart Arrive BIS EQM EQD Award Bucket EQDMethod Upgrade Instrument
2018-01-24 COU DFW 489 500 118 1298 G Fare T-100 EXP
2018-01-24 DFW IAH 224 500 55 605 G Fare No EXP
2018-01-25 IAH LAX 1379 1379 207 2277 L Special T-100 EXP
2018-01-25 LAX SYD 7488 7488 1124 12356 L Special Gate SWU
2018-01-30 SYD LAX 7488 7488 749 8237 Q Special T-100 SWU
2018-01-30 LAX IAH 1379 1379 138 1518 Q Special T-100 EXP
2018-01-30 IAH ORD 925 925 128 1408 G Fare T-100 EXP
2018-01-30 ORD COU 315 500 45 495 G Fare T-72 EXP
2018-02-13 COU ORD 315 500 168 1848 L Fare No EXP
2018-02-14 ORD COU 315 500 168 1848 L Fare T-10 EXP
2018-02-18 COU DFW 489 500 82 902 L Fare T-72 EXP
2018-02-18 DFW LAS 1055 1055 176 1936 L Fare No EXP
2018-02-24 LAS DFW 1055 1055 151 1661 L Fare No EXP
2018-02-24 DFW COU 489 500 71 781 L Fare No EXP
2018-02-25 COU ORD 315 500 75 825 L Fare No EXP
2018-02-25 ORD ATL 606 606 137 1507 L Fare T-48 EXP
2018-02-27 ATL DFW 732 732 128 1408 L Fare T-48 EXP
2018-02-27 DFW COU 489 500 85 935 L Fare T-48 EXP
2018-02-28 COU DFW 489 500 145 1595 L Fare No EXP
2018-02-28 DFW IAH 224 500 68 748 L Fare T-24 EXP
2018-03-01 IAH ORD 925 925 157 1727 L Fare T-24 EXP
2018-03-01 ORD COU 315 500 55 605 L Fare T-24 EXP
2018-03-04 COU DFW 489 500 198 2178 L Fare Gate EXP
2018-03-04 DFW SJC 1438 1438 327 3597 M Fare T-24 EXP
2018-03-06 SJC JFK 2586 2586 196 2156 L Fare T-48 Miles
2018-03-08 JFK ORD 740 740 169 1859 M Fare T-48 EXP
2018-03-08 ORD COU 315 500 74 814 M Fare T-48 EXP
2018-03-18 COU DFW 489 500 79 869 L Fare Gate EXP
2018-03-18 DFW PHX 868 868 138 1518 L Fare T-24 EXP
2018-03-18 PHX LAS 255 500 42 462 L Fare T-48 EXP
2018-03-23 LAS ORD 1514 1514 202 2222 L Fare T-48 EXP
2018-03-23 ORD COU 315 500 43 473 L Fare T-100 EXP

Last edited by HLCinCOU; Mar 30, 2018 at 11:36 am
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Old Mar 30, 2018, 11:32 am
  #187  
 
Join Date: Jan 2017
Location: COU
Programs: AA EXP, Bonvoy Ambassador, Hertz PC
Posts: 499
Hmm. Well that didn't work quite as well as I had hoped. When I pasted from my google sheet into the reply, it showed up in a nice table with cell borders and whatnot...totally readable. Then when I posted I got a mess of HTML that was totally illegible. Edited, turned on "source" and pasted in, and got what you see above. Still not very readable. If anybody has tips for embedding a table in a post I'm happy to go edit again. Otherwise, if you're really interested I'd imagine you could get this to paste back into a sheet, as it's just space-delimited.
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Old Mar 30, 2018, 11:33 am
  #188  
 
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: SFO
Programs: AA EXP, SPG / Marriott GLD, HHonors GLD
Posts: 520
^ that's a pretty good clip. I'm running at 88% so far this year; better than last year (82%). Probably because of rolling spend (currently about $22k). 100% on TPAC SWUs this year too (3 so far); hopefully that continues for the rest of them
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Old Mar 30, 2018, 11:34 am
  #189  
 
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: SFO
Programs: AA EXP, SPG / Marriott GLD, HHonors GLD
Posts: 520
Originally Posted by HLCinCOU
Hmm. Well that didn't work quite as well as I had hoped. When I pasted from my google sheet into the reply, it showed up in a nice table with cell borders and whatnot...totally readable. Then when I posted I got a mess of HTML that was totally illegible. Edited, turned on "source" and pasted in, and got what you see above. Still not very readable. If anybody has tips for embedding a table in a post I'm happy to go edit again. Otherwise, if you're really interested I'd imagine you could get this to paste back into a sheet, as it's just space-delimited.
could try copying in the table as an image
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Old Mar 30, 2018, 1:31 pm
  #190  
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Thousand Oaks, Ca., USA
Programs: AA Lifetime Plat; Bonvoy Titanium Lifetime Elite;Hyatt Globalist; HHonors Diamond; United Silver
Posts: 8,313
Down to 3 of 10, all MIA-LAX, and return, all successes using miles/copay.

was #1 last Wednesday, no one cleared. J is selling out, sometimes a week in advance or more.
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Old Mar 31, 2018, 7:15 pm
  #191  
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Programs: AA
Posts: 4
AA 192 HKG - LAX is Saturday or Sunday better for SWU

Currently booked on 192 from HKG - LAX on Saturday June 2nd with SWU wait listed (cleared on outbound on May 18 yay). I can change my flight to Sunday June 3rd and is basically cost neutral. Anyone have any data regarding SWU clearing on either Saturday or Sunday flights from Hong Kong. Would have thought Sunday would be harder, to arrive Sunday night for work Monday... but could be very wrong? EF data doesn't seem very helpful in predicting availability...
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Old Mar 31, 2018, 7:18 pm
  #192  
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Programs: AA
Posts: 4
AA 192 & AA 193 LAX - HKG now have PE

Looks like the 77W in May has Premium Economy based on the seat map but is not yet being sold as inventory. I'm booked outbound on May 18th (SWU cleared to J) and wait listed for June 2nd but so far snagged a seat in PE for the return.

Last edited by TheBritAbroad; Mar 31, 2018 at 7:31 pm Reason: Posted too soon
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Old Apr 3, 2018, 12:45 pm
  #193  
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: DEN
Programs: Double OWE (AA EXP, QF Plat), FI Gold
Posts: 1,887
Originally Posted by HLCinCOU
All in all I've been super happy with my upgrade success ever since they changed the list order last May. I tend to book late, and regional tickets are expensive; before the change I got the upgrade maybe 30% of the time, and as you can see here I'm at about 80% this year. In any case, without further ado:
Those are good numbers. I've been flying MIA-MEX 2x/week for the last two months (many times via DFW) and that's a heavy EXP/CK route (last flight there were 91 EXPs on an A319!). I'm currently at 77% for comp upgrades, luckily I had over $40k EQD last year so I'm usually at or near the top of the list. Surprisingly my upgrades for MIA-LGA-MIA this week all cleared at about 36 hours out, time enough to reserve a meal. I'm not upset.

Last edited by zpaul; Apr 3, 2018 at 12:49 pm Reason: bad math
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Old Apr 7, 2018, 3:11 pm
  #194  
 
Join Date: May 2006
Programs: Aeromexico Platinum and AA Exec Platinum
Posts: 212
We’re on MIA MAD Wednesday. Waitlisted to use SWU for the last 2 months. Expertflyer shows J4 and the seatmap shows 10 empty seats. Is there any chance this clears before the gate? Thanks in advance
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Old Apr 9, 2018, 7:59 pm
  #195  
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: San Francisco
Programs: AA EXP; Marriott BonVoy Titanium Elite, Marriott LT Plat.
Posts: 1,717
Originally Posted by TheBritAbroad
Currently booked on 192 from HKG - LAX on Saturday June 2nd with SWU wait listed (cleared on outbound on May 18 yay). I can change my flight to Sunday June 3rd and is basically cost neutral. Anyone have any data regarding SWU clearing on either Saturday or Sunday flights from Hong Kong. Would have thought Sunday would be harder, to arrive Sunday night for work Monday... but could be very wrong? EF data doesn't seem very helpful in predicting availability...
Nov - Dec, I was on a rotation of departing HKG on Sat and my SWU were always cleared before my outbound flights. But since then, I'm on a Tue-departure schedule from HKG and again outbound tends to clear several days before I leave LAX. Will be heading out again in a couple weeks as my return to HKG has been confirmed today by the clients.
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