This new change on AA's part suck and we all know it. Let's face it, AA is in looking to make money just like all other businesses. If you don't like it, cash in and move on. End your paid subscription to EF too.

At the moment, F/J seats are cheap. I just booked, SFO-LAX-MIA-PHL-ORD-LAX-SFO for $490 in F/J (wide-body flights except for SFO-LAX-SFO).

Next!!

What a tease with EF today! Got C alerts for every single international flight I was watching from now to EOS. Every single one of the alerts I received turned out to be false with no actual upgradable C space available as confirmed by calling AA. Really hope EF is able to get this fixed and accurately show AA upgrade space sometime soon.

-FlyerBeek

That's not new. AA has never published complimentary/500-mile upgrade inventory. For R (which became the sole code for such upgrades in 2016), the upgrade space has been separate from any revenue R and known only to AA.

FYI we were told today by AA that there is an issue with how they filed some international fares that prevented us from seeing the proper upgrade space for some markets. They are working on the fix, will probably take a couple days.

Many-year subscriber here. I'd like to point out that the EF tool isn't perfect with this change yet. I booked a GRU-JFK flight in I class - Business on Apr 5. The EF search shows lots of A upgrade space that day, and 3+/- days. My SWU was waitlisted so after hearing that EF had changed the award search to point to the actual sub-category of A (or C) which is allocated for upgrades, I just called reservations. They searched my flight again, and 3+/- days and no A space to upgrade was available. Not trying to scare people here about the accuracy, but perhaps pointing out a bug, or AA not always giving you the proper sub-inventory thru their API.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...d09978081b.jpg

Oops - guess my page hadn't been refreshed since your last post, EF Voice. Sounds like it's in their bug queue.

Not true.

AA used to publish X inventory to EF. A properly set alert would trigger a phone call to AA and secure the upgrade. Not going to debate whether this resulted in 'line jumping' or not.

Also made it easy to see if it was worth same day changing to an earlier/later flight if one had flexibility in their schedule.

Absolutely correct. The good old days! Published X inventory is why I first became an EF subscriber back in 2005. Hard to believe EF has been here for at least 15 years.

-FlyerBeek

Since the introduction of R as a revenue class (maybe a year ago?), it has always been a subset that's used for e500/EXP upgrades, similar to what AA is now doing to A and C.

The only catch is that EF has not had the ability to show R/X upgrade classes for a while (going back to the early 2010s?), so what you're seeing is the revenue R availability, not the upgrade R availability. EF *will*, however, be able to show A/C upgrade availability separate from A/C revenue availability.

Thanks for the info! That was before my time.

:) not a problem. If you're really old, may even remember paper stickers!

Oh man! The Gold revalidation stickers, back when "Gold" was the bees knees! Can't recall--were those just space available and booked into F or did we WL and they had a separate bucket? That was 30-35 years ago?!?

According to this site, we just need to wait a few weeks before EF is just that much more of a valuable tool:

https://thepointsguy.com/news/americ...lyer-upgrades/

Looking forward to EF showing true C and A upgradable space with updates to come.

I disagree that this change makes EF "more valuable," or at least significantly so--it has always shown C and A upgrade space. We thought we'd be losing this feature now that C and A are being used as revenue classes, but the change just restores the status quo re. upgrade space.

What we're gaining is the ability to see C and A revenue space that is equal to or greater than C and A upgrade space, which I'd say is not nearly as useful or relevant for most.

Brought me back so many memories! :)