ijgordon

I also suppose if AA has an inkling of potential IRROPS, like crew/maintenance/weather (for that flight or the day before/after) they would hold off clearing upgrades. How's the reliability of this route now? Wasn't it pretty terrible in the early days (or was that LAX-HKG)?

pauleeepaul

This started to be a thing about 8 years ago. I think it is in part to prevent business travelers from buying Y and upgrading to J in advance. It pissed me off at first as a big FU to customers getting SWUs (presumably customers with some value to AA) but like anything else i have gotten used to it and with an EF membership have not missed a TATL upgrade in years.

arlflyer

"Strategic reason"? Yes, minimizing opportunity cost. Missing out on a potential walk-up or late-stage J fare is a big loss, given that such a purchase is effectively 100% contribution, save for the marginal cost of that pax's fuel, F&B, and other consumables. Making elites wait a little longer to find out about upgrades on a flight they're going to board regardless? Not so much of a loss.

C17PSGR

Agreed. I was responding to OP's statement that there were 18 empty J seats, which doesn't directly reflect inventory particularly on routes where there are likely to be travelers who are from OneWorld partners. I find the J seat maps out of LAX flights to be particularly unreliable since there are often people connecting from CX, QF, or JL who may have purchased a J/F ticket but don't have assigned seats.

xliioper

Didn't realize they only go up to 7 on AA. DL buckets go up to 9.

DataPlumber

Lakeviewsteve

One reason for not releasing upgrades too early could be If another airline cancels a flight to HKG, AA can sell them a vacant seat but can't if someone is already upgraded to it.

enpremiere

The conspiracy side could say that it's a carefully crafted, multi-year PR move to spark threads on FT that effectively push down ones questioning the validity of elite status or going free agent in 2019

After all, if readers are busy reading about Delta's logo making an appearance on American's IFE, that's less time focused on AA's business and loyalty programs.

ESpen36

Exactly. Assigning seats in advance is not customary outside of U.S. carriers. In most of the world, seats are assigned on the day of departure (at check-in), even for the big carriers. In fact, some major international carriers allow advanced seat assignments only in premium cabins or with the highest elite status.

ijgordon

Well, with this logic it's easy to argue they should never clear any upgrades in advance and only do them at the gate. But that would severely impair the value of AAdvantage to customers. So there's a balancing act, with AA using its analytics to determine when it's unlikely to sell a business class seat and therefore okay to release it as an upgrade or reward. But of course they're taking into account probably dozens of variables, beyond what we can comprehend as FTers. And yes, perhaps they have been skewing the equation toward later clearing -- if, for example, they're selling more last-minute/high-fare business class tickets than they used to (due to, say, a better economy or a more competitive product), then the opportunity cost of giving a seat away as an upgrade/reward has increased as well, and they may be more likely to wait.

They're also apparently busy reading about AA plastic cups making appearances on DL (mainline) aircraft.

arlflyer

There is also the issue of training the customer. If they released instrument upgrade space regularly and reliably such that customers could count on it, then X number of customers that might have actually bought cash J would instead use cheaper instruments. So I would imagine that to some extent there is a desire to keep customers guessing, and ensure that the ones who really want/need a product buy it outright.

Of course, as you point out, the downside to widespread application of this logic is that it undercuts the value of the FFP and AA's value proposition as a network carrier. I was simply speaking to the likely logic behind the action taken in this particular case, not suggesting that it would be wise to apply universally.

dkc192

I realize I'm late to the game here, but just wanted to point out a pattern I've noticed where for whatever reason, AA seems to hold back upgrades (both into C for instruments and R for UDU/e500s where applicable) on flights with overbooked Y, even if J/F is wide open. I've had this happen to me on BOS-DFW (among other routes), where (shockingly) F was wide open and Y was chock full and likely overbooked--right at T-24 a mass of upgrades cleared and filled the F cabin. Given that Y is at Y5 on the OP's flight, looks like this could be playing out here.

arlflyer

Completely logical. A lot of (most?) corporate travel policies specify class of service, not ticket cost. So AA can sell a ton of flexible Y, which isn't cheap, to passengers who simply can't buy J/F, even if discounted J/F costs less. So AA is still printing money as they oversell, and will be happy to roll folks up into premium cabins to sort out the mess later.

Same underlying principle as I mentioned earlier - take the customers in order of descending value, and try to hold out for those late sales.

ijgordon

I think dkc192's point was less about overbooking in general -- of course that makes sense especially when they can roll forward -- and really about why they seem to withhold upgrades in this situation. Why not clear some of the upgrades, which would create more space in Y and thus more Y seats to sell at high fares? Now of course, whether or not they clear the upgrades really has no bearing on how many Y seats they'll authorize for sale, AA knows all the booking #'s. They can reduce available J inventory without actually putting pax in those seats.

But conceivably a pax looking to make a last-minute booking could see a full seat map and decide not to book that flight given the potential for a crappy seat (or a bump). Clearing the upgrades makes space on the seat map and the flight becomes optically more attractive. Not sure how many people make decisions on seat maps, I know it would factor into my planning.

While I personally haven't observed the phenomenon of upgrades being withheld when Y seems overbooked, to the extent it's true (which I'm not opining on), it doesn't really make sense to me. But a lot of airline revenue management decisions don't seem to make sense...

arlflyer

I think this is the point at which our attempts to hypothesize run up against our lack of data...presumably they're trying to algorithmically balance all the competing phenomena we're talking about (selling J, selling Y, rolling Y pax into J, upgrading, etc.) both in space (seats) and time, while maximizing revenue. Not an easy optimization problem!