Hi FT,

Lately the price of J tickets has me puzzled, so I decided to run an experiment at my own peril. I've already requalified for EXP next year, but I have weekly domestic travel from 1/1 to 3/31. Tonight I booked 22 segments on 9 tickets in Y, and in each of those tickets the J fare was $1000-1200 over the Y fare. The cost of the Y fares ranged from $599 to $859. There isn't a single J seat taken (on EF) in any segment; as best as I can tell everything is wide open. I booked all the tickets directly on aa.com. A few of the segments have C inventory available, but most do not. The routes are all combinations of AUS-DFW, DFW-EGE, AUS-EGE or the returns to those routes. Typically leaving on a Tuesday and returning on a Saturday.

I'm curious to find out:
1/ How soon will the TODs show up in the app?
2/ What is the average spread between upfare and TOD?
3/ Does the price of the Y ticket matter when determining TOD offer? (I booked several routes where the Y price varied but the J price was the same.)
4/ I booked two extra segments on award tickets. Will I get TOD offers on those segments?

Join me in seat 8A/F to figure out how little SWUs matter these days.

Mods feel free to merge this into one of the other threads on this topic if it makes sense.

Interesting experiment. However, the results are going to depend very heavily on the route(s) you're flying and the time of day you're flying. If you pass along that info the experiment will be a lot more meaningful.

I often see TOD offers almost immediately. Did you see anything come up on any of the 22 segments you booked?

I have a few answers:

1/ I saw the offers on all paid segments immediately after ticketing.
2/ The average cost to upfare each ticket is $1062, the average TOD is $1041 though it varies widely. On some tickets it's $800 over the upfare, on some it's $500 under.
3/ The underlying ticket price seems totally irrelevant. The TOD offer seems to be based on the number of J seats on the equipment, so the 319s are the highest cost every time.
4/ No offers on the award tickets.

The AUS-EGE nonstop is far more expensive (in Y or J) than connecting in DFW, but the TODs are cheaper. I assume this is because there are more J seats AUS-EGE on the CR7 than DFW-EGE on the 319. Yet another reason flying the 319 on that route makes no sense to me.

Interesting question here. I am flying DCA-DFW-AUS...interested in a TOD upgrade but none has appeared in the app. Should I assume none will be offered, should I reach out to AA via the app to ask about the up-fare, or just hope for the requested upgrades to clear and enjoy my row 8 seats if they don't.

Anecdotal evidence of 3 upcoming domestic reservations - it seems the upgrade fee are no longer TOD ($409 upgrade fee for JFK-ORD? No thank you), and refaring would be cheaper.

I've seen the upgrade offer quite a bit on DCA/LGA and DCA/BOS both 319 routes (mixed with E175s). Although probably these were off times-middle of the week, middle of the day. Usually they're pretty cheap-$49 to $69.

I would agree that the offers are probably based on the historical level of booked seats F on that particular route. I for example never see them on MIA/DCA or MIA/DFW.

What I have noticed is that F fares have jumped quite a bit since summer. Typical now is $1.5K for MIA/DFW (on a 321). Given how full the F cabins seem to be even before the upgrade window opens I guess AA is getting these higher fares and when not aggressively selling upgrades.

Agreed that TOD is probably not the right term since I have multiple offers for over $1100.

Part of this is trying to understand how they're filling these cabins given how elevated F pricing is, even far into the future. Looking ahead at next summer the F pricing is about double what I paid last summer on lots of different routes. That just seems like wishful thinking to me given the factors at play last summer and the overall economic outlook.

You shouldn't assume none will be offered. Depends how many F seats are already sold. You can check the upfare cost without calling by trying to change your flight on the app or aa.com. You'll see the upcharge and can back out or proceed to purchase.

My theory is that airlines really dislike selling tickets that far in advance, since there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty that far in the future. However, they feel compelled to publish schedules due to competitive pressures, so they put ridiculous fares up to show their (non-binding) intent to fly that route at that time. Otherwise you might assume they won't fly that route and just book a competitor. The ridiculous fares mean they don't have to take on the liability of giving you fare difference free changes when they inevitably do a schedule change, and lets them collect some extra marginal income from the price insensitive traveler who really wants to confirm their travel super early.

I suspect that if anti trust laws would let them, the airlines would get together and agree to only release schedules 4-6 months in advance.

Vail has some of the most expensive real estate in the country with a lot of high net worth individuals traveling during ski season. I would think they can move a lot of expensive fares. A $1500 airfare doesn't seem unreasonable when you look at the cost of paying $600 a night for a hotel.

So far the thing that has been most surprising about the upgrade offers is how dynamic the pricing is. I've checked a few times a day and the price moves as little as +/- $1 on some of the routes.

Another interesting tidbit - when there's a schedule change the TOD offers no longer show up in the app. It must be so frustrating to work in tech for AA.

I've also found that if I waitlist for a points+copay upgrade, I won't see offers. It'd be nice to see them because I would likely grab one if it was competitively priced with the value of the points+$ upgrade. I'm guessing this is by design, though. They'd rather me burn the points and give them some cash in the process.

I tended to think this was a strategy, but I'm really leaning toward it just being crap tech at this point. Once ANYTHING changes on the initial itinerary, the offers go away. One of my itineraries changed by 7 minutes and now no offer.