Question: Are rolling EQDs "earned" when a trip is ticketed, or only after the flight? I ask because my wife is EXP, we have purchased tickets for future trips adding up to well over $15,000, and it seems she is having better luck with upgrades. She just got upgraded for Monday 9:45 a.m. flight LAX-MIA, which has rarely happened previously.

EQD, EQM, and RDM are all credited when you take a flight, not when your purchase it.

Thanks much. One more: is there a way to track rolling EQDs, other than keeping a personal track?

Unfortunately not.

Lateupgrades?
 

Flew ord/tys today and return tomorrow. Both flights J6 on EF & no seatmap wide open no seats assigned. Didn't upgrade like normal at T100 didn't upgrade today's flight T-28 and tomorrow's return at T-26. Y was not oversold.

New norm? Or some kind of IRROPS prep?

Flying MIA-LAX this coming Friday (07/13).

I'm a low EQD PlatPro so not really holding my breath on this one, BUT, it is now T-71 and a quick dummy booking suggests that NO ONE is getting cleared. Not even EXPs. Granted I don't have an expert flyer account, nor am I really familiar with the "buckets" or how they work. All I did was making dummy bookings daily and count the number of available F seats (matter of fact the number of F seats actually went UP today). Can anyone more familiar with AA's upgrade process chime in?

Thanks!

I just made EXP with AA and feel like I am being penalized with not being able to earn 500 mile upgrades anymore. I often book travel for work and book my SO on an economy ticket and request to place her on the upgrade list. When this does clear, I end up having to use several 500 mile vouchers. However, as I am no longer earning them with EXP, I assume i would now have to pay out of pocket the $40/voucher?

Thanks for any clarification.

Quarterly update, a bit (4 flights) late but with significant methodological improvements.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

The sheet now has data back to 2017-05-20 except for upgrade results which I only started on 2018-01-01. Right now I have a rolling EQD just over 18k and have been upgraded 83% of the time (when the plane in question had a J cabin).

Minor notes:
1. I changed the upgrade result column to use numeric values, on the theory that someday I might want to do quantitative analysis on it. Positive numbers indicate when an upgrade cleared, in minutes before flight time. The zeros are "battlefield upgrades" i.e. upgraded after already seated in Y. The 10s are "gate dances" cleared off the airport list. Negative numbers indicate failure; the number is how many slots away I was from clearing off the airport list. If I was 4th on the list and 2 cleared, that's a -2 (but that could also mean 8th on the list with 6 clearing). Null (blank) cells indicate either a)the plane didn't have a J cabin so no upgrade was possible or b)the flight was before the first of the year when I started keeping track of whether I got upgraded. The success percentage leaves the nulls out.
2. The "fare purchased" and "fare credited" columns seem redundant unless you look closely, in which case they seem confusing. But it's really just to check random refaring, usually because of IRROPS. Often if I have a flight canceled the rebooking ends up credited as a full Y fare...this lets me see that.
3. The "Max EQM/EQD" field is just the simple ratio 100,000/12,000 ...in other words, the EQM/EQD you'd have if you got the bare minimum of both. It's only there to provide a reference for the cell next door which is the YTD actual ratio, which you want to be below the max.
4. The link is live, so you'll see results up to the last time I updated it even if you click this months from now.

Anyway, as with last quarter, I'm really happy with these results.

Meanwhile...anybody have guesses on whether I'll get my LAX-AKL rt to clear via SWU? Outbound 2018-11-01 return 2018-11-12. Right now expertflyer shows J7 on both flights and the seat map is wide open (21 and 17 respectively). I have them waitlisted of course, and alerts set in expertflyer. Seriously don't want to do 13.5 hours in Y if I can avoid it :p

Yes. The trade-off for no longer earning 500-mile upgrades is that you get auto-requested complimentary upgrades on all domestic flights, and higher priority for those upgrades. It's a good trade-off.

November is still light years away so it's anyone's guess. An empty business cabin can easily fill up and a full business cabin could easily open up before then. On a route like LAX-AKL it probably won't clear until about 24-48 hours out, if at all.

First is often sold out on this route, I've been #1 and not gotten upgraded.

Upgraded on 7/10 for my flight on 7/16 from CLT => FRA. Still waiting for FRA => DFW on 7/20 to clear