Wanted to use SWU on the US->Europe route in August. My itinerary was BOS->Moscow. Spent 30min on the phone with an EXP service line agent and she found NO availability for a single TATL flight where an SWU would be confirmed right away for the entire week around Aug/20. She checked 20 different itineraries (which I found using ITA Matrix) with JFK-LHR, JFK-BCN, ORD-BCN, ORD-FCO, PHL-LHR, PHL-TXL, MIA-MAD, CLT-LHR -- whatever crazy thing one would imagine to be AA-operated. Quite frustrating! Seat maps for the flights ex PHL and CLT in business looked empty, but nevertheless they didn't want to clear an upgrade right away -- I didn't want to play stupid lottery with the waiting list.

Ended up booking WTP (premium economy) on British round trip with two day-time flights on the way from Boston and an overnight in London.

What's the point of giving SWUs if one can't use them anyway?

Side-note: given almost identical pricing between AA in P and BA in T, the DME-LHR segments fall into premium economy (if it's on a 787) when booking a BA itinerary but always to the normal economy when booking AA.

How do they decide this stuff? My MEX-DFW flight on 6/28 has (as per EF) had seats open for a while and they are still selling biz seats. We are well within the EXP 100-hr window. I assume AA is just going to wait until 2 hours before the flight to see if they can sell the 2-3 remaining seats? Strange that DFW-JFK cleared at 100hrs but they are holding off on processing this one.

Heads up - looks like tons of C inventory just dropped for LAX-LHR in 2020. One of my flights was C7 - unheard of to see on that route this far out IME!

Oh wow, this is on a ton of days.

Just curious for some general feedback here. I have to head to Bilbao, Spain in October for a conference (leaving from PHX). My dates are for the most part set. I'll have to depart PHX on October 6th and can leave Europe on either an afternoon flight on October 10th or anytime on the 11th. I've done my research looking for flight options. Basically I can fly into MAD, BCN, MUC, or FRA to get a connecting flight to BIO. Flying out is a little more open but I think I'm going to fly out of LHR on the direct flight to PHX.

When looking at options, I noticed that no SWUs were available on AA's site. Being so far out, it's not a surprise. I had an Expert Flyer subscription in the past but didn't continue it as I only do one flight to Europe per year which is the only time I really care about using an SWU. I was considering getting it to monitor it over the next few weeks before I book. Just curious, what would be the benefit? I suppose I could set up an alert on any flights I'm considering to see if C inventory pops up, but I'm sure that is a long shot so far out anyways. And at this point I'm sure most everything is J7 - I suppose I could use it to weed out any that aren't?

Right now I'm thinking of doing PHX - DFW - MAD on the outbound and LHR to PHX on the inbound. I can book PE and at least there are 37J seats versus other configurations that have 20.

They have lots of data about each and every route and flight that tells them what proportion will fail to show up and what number of last minute bookings there might be. This will be heavily influenced by the route and the time of day and the frequency of flights. On routes where there are numerous flights per day I would expect them to be looking at the overall demand, not just the single flight - this clearly happens on routes like LAX-JFK, JFK-LHR and LAX-LHR, where there are multiple AA flights as well as (for LHR) many BA flights.

If you track EF for a few days it becomes clear that availability in all classes fluctuates up and down much more than you would expect and certainly much more than the number of empty seats varies. I've seen flights go from J0 Y7 to J7 Y0 and back to J2 Y2 in the course of less than 24 hours.

Just an update: T- about 31 my upgrade cleared! Lots of seats for sale still on the flight according to EF. Yay!

Pretty much EXACTLY as predicted above ;) enjoy your flight!

I know! h/t to you. Thanks for your generous replies!

Inside T+2hrs, J1,D1,I1, EXP #1 on list...not clearing
 

What's the deal here. Has been like this all week. They going to make me sweat this out until boarding?

This one has not changed at all for the last few days. We are now like 1h45m from departure, still seats open, still selling biz, i'm #1 on the list, still not clearing. I am guessing they're hoping to sell it for $20 to someone with no status. Nice. EXP here, I'd guess my rolling EQD for last 12mo are ~24/25k?

Of course with only one seat left they are going to wait until boarding or just before to clear any upgrades (depends on the GA).

45 min to boarding, should I got to the gate early?