mcrw00

I am on the upgrade waitlist for J on DFW-HKG this Saturday. We are now nearing the T-60 mark for this flight, and the J cabin is wide open, to the tune of at least J10, and possibly many more. I know this because of EF listing J7 (as well as lots of inventory in discounted biz), an AAgent mentioning “availablility in the double digits” a couple of days ago, and the seat map currently showing 18 open seats.

Despite all this, the C inventory has hardly budged. EF alerted me to two openings Tuesday, which I assume were quickly given to upgraders, as by the time I logged in 15 min later they were back to C0.

I know that AA has the right to run their upgrade scheme however they wish, and that I have no right to a C upgrade just because there are J seats available. That being said, I have to wonder what business logic there is to holding off so long on clearing upgrades.
While there’s an obvious need to sell as many J seats as possible, I do not think it is realistic to expect close to 10 paid J sales this late. Wouldn’t it make better sense to clear J down to about half it’s current inventory so as to free up Y seats?

Am am I missing something about the buying patterns for this particular route? Or am I correct in thinking this is probably not the most economically efficient way to be managing the revenue for this flight?...

JJeffrey

Nothing unusual here especially with a historically hard to clear route like DFW-HKG on one of the busier days Saturday. I've seen flights way more open than that in business go right down to about 12-24 hrs out until AA releases the flood gates of C space.

Outside of a few random batches of C space being released at unpredictable times throughout the year, I honestly think that for a vast majority of routes AA doesn't do any type of active upgrade inventory management until just before the flight. It's almost as if an alarm pops up on an analyst's desktop reminding them that the next day's DFW-HKG is T-24 out at which point they release C space to whatever number they see fit.

Uncle Nonny

I cleared 3 weeks ago for my 8/23 DFW-HKG using mile$. I cleared 2 upgrades (showed 7 and I needed 3) on my last PEK flight and the FA told me that people often pay the last minute full J on that route. Maybe, as the previous poster eluded to, the HKG Saturday route gets a big walk up at the last minute.

xliioper

You realize that the buckets are not additive right? If it's says J7, then it's pretty safe to assume there are only 7 seats left unsold (as they generally do not oversell J).

JonNYC

This flight has only 2 or 3 PE seats for sale, only 3 F seats for sale and and is Y5-- so an incredibly poor "poster child" flight for trying to prove there's something unusual/wrong about AA's RM here.

Dave Noble

No it isn't - 7 is the highest number that shows in tools such as expert flyer - 20 available and it would still show 7

platbrownguy

That's true for Jn when n<7. But EF shows at most J7, so that's what you'll see even when no seats have been sold.

mcrw00

ESpen36

Not really, unless you have access to AA's own interface where you are looking at the complete loads (proprietary data). The publicly-available services that draw data from the CRS show a maximum of 7 in each bucket, so J7 could mean 7 seats or 40 seats. No way to know which it is unless you call AA or ask somebody who has access. You can look at the seat map to check the number of unassigned seats, but everyone knows that seat maps do not usually paint an accurate picture of cabin availability, particularly on longhaul international flights where a lot of codeshare and overseas pax might not have selected seats yet.

platbrownguy

Why is that? Those who are willing to pay the high prices for the last few seats in Y (which are usually multiples of the advance-purchase fares) are at least more likely than advanced-purchasers to be willing to pay for J... so if there would be 10 people who need a short-notice seat and would ordinarily buy expensive Y, but only 5 Y seats, it stands to reason that at least some of the other 5 might pay for J. Maybe not, but I don't think it's irrational for AA to hold off on upgrades when Y/PE are nearly full. (Of course, when they end up giving out op-ups Y-->PE and PE-->J, that's a different story...)

cedric

How do you know that Y isn't oversold?

C17PSGR

A lot of flights with partner connections unfortunately seem empty in J, but aren't. For example, I was on a domestic E175 flight out of LAX the other day. The seating chart showed me as the only pax in F, and there was no one on the upgrade list or on the standby list (often non-revs who will fly F if available). Then, F boarded full with people obviously connecting off of Qantas and JAL who apparently didn't have assigned seats until they showed up at the gate.

There are some less experienced RM analysts covering Baton Rouge to ORD but those watching DFW-HKG, LAX-JFK, LAX-LHR are more senior. Those flights fill up at the last minute in J with revenue pax and they'll wait to let SWU's clear (unfortunately for me )

mcrw00

matrixwalker2012

fotographer

The simple answer to this is "Because AA can"