I'd say your odds are pretty darn good, at least relatively speaking. The seatmap with 11 empties is one thing, but the part that sticks out for me is the I7. Also, tangentially related, at Y0 with a bad looking econ map I wonder if they'll end up doing op-ups.

Oh wow, I had just done an availability search before....did the award search and it's C3! If your upgrade hasn't cleared already call them up and they should be able to.

I called and they cleared me thanks for letting me know , I did a search before I made this post and it was C0 and I had a alert but they didn't send me a email.

Yea... Those EF alerts are tricky at times. I've experienced the opposite on a recent trip. I was upgraded using SWU and C inventory never became available according to EF.

Yeah, the EF alerts are definitely far from reliable. My understanding is they do sweeps a few times a day to look at the inventory. But of course AA is often doing things like opening some C space and then quickly clearing people into it, which can happen entirely between sweeps. Last time I had one notify me (for LAX-AKL last month) I got the email within a couple minutes and immediately called AA; while I was on hold I checked EF and saw it was already back to C0, so I checked the AA site and saw my SWUs had already automatically cleared. So I hung up the phone.

Neither. A few years ago it was very predictable (and was an absolute number at that time), but that is definitely not the case currently.

My early Feb DFW-NRT and my HKG-DFW did not clear. (I'm waitlisted). Nor did my DFW-LHR on 17 Mar.

I've flown this twice in the past week - the UG lists were very long (40+ on the list). If we were lucky, 1 would upgrade at the gate. For both flights, I snagged a PE seat (row 9 or 11) so I felt content not to bother with upgrading what is a 2:10 flight.

FYI there's C2 on this Sunday's DFW-HKG (AA 125, 12/16). It was C3 and I just changed onto it to avoid DFW-NRT-HKG.

Has AA become more stingy with releasing complimentary upgrade space this year?

Maybe just bad luck of the draw but I have a trip coming up this Saturday where only 3 out of 12 seats in J are booked with MCE only having 4 seats taken including me+companion yet no upgrade has been processed.

We have the best seats in Y so it’s all good either way but just found this kind of strange. I’d like to make my meal selections if possible this is the only reason I would like to be upgraded at least 24 hours out.

I am EXP FWIW.

Well, my own feeling is that it was earlier than this year, but yes, the general consensus seems to be that upgrades tend to post later than they once did. AA probably did this to make sure they didn't lose out on revenue from last-minute travelers; if you post all your upgrades at T-100 and then a few people try to buy J the next day and can't, that's a fairly obvious loss from their perspective.

The somewhat less obvious part is the compositional effect on which EXPs actually get the upgrades. This change kind of dovetails with the list order changes in May 2017 (list was ordered by date of booking, now it's by EQD); both changes greatly benefit flyers that book last minute, high-priced tickets, at the expense of flyers that tend to book early for lower cost. Both changes appear to have caused quite a bit of consternation around here, but it's important to recognize that this is more or less a zero-sum thing; for every EXP who finds himself lower in the lists now, there's one who finds himself higher.

I'm one of the big beneficiaries of the new policy. I typically book no more than 48 hours out, and tend to fly lots of regional routes that have a high price/mile; before the EQD change I cleared less than half the time, and often by the time I booked J would already be full or close to it because they had already processed some upgrades. That was sort of a drag. I knew my behavior was exactly what the airline really wanted...but they were giving all the upgrades to flyers who were behaving in ways much less beneficial to AA. The system effectively had a clear bias in favor of the people who paid the least for their tickets. The new system strikes me as a lot more sensible. Of course my self-interest aligns there too (2018 upgrade success >80%), so go figure. But I just wanted to point out that there are good effects for a lot of people from these changes.

That said, hope you clear before T-24 so you can get that meal preordered.

Maybe the old bug has returned. I am also on a DCA-DFW flight on Saturday evening where only 4 of the 16 F seats are occupied, and no one has been upgraded. (It was 4 of 16 before the CK window opened.) EF shows J7 I7 Y7 and C3. I am also EXP. I am traveling with a companion on the same PNR and don't want a random assignment at the last minute to have us in wildly different seats. Plus be able to select a meal. It's very frustrating. Nothing wrong with our reservation as we both got upgraded on the connecting DFW-AUS flight at T-100.

The only plausible explanation is that Dec 14 is the target date for Congress to adjourn and maybe AA is keeping the F cabin clear on that weekend to accommodate last minute purchases.

On many of my flights this year, I've been getting upgraded at right around T-26.5, regardless of the number of available seats.

It's at least early enough to allow for meal selection, but can be annoying when it goes down from J7+ to J1 and I'm pretty much stuck in the seat I was assigned.

So, for my two trips over the last week, I was 0 for 7 on upgrades. Got to #1 on ATL-DCA and was #3 on DFW-ATL. Did not bother with LAX-DFW as both flights were on 789s. Could not even upgrade DCA-PHL or DCA-CLT.