AA finally upgraded me at T-minus 36 hours and J6 on EF. I guess they gave up lol.

How does it go from J4 to J6? Doesn't J4 mean 4 open seats in J fare? So more seats were opened up somehow?

Easy, just 2 folks that were up front cancelled or changed their tickets, happens all the time.

A clear pattern on many (not all) domestic flights is that the J cabin will be cleared down as far as J4 once complimentary upgrade windows open. In other words, if a flight is J5 or more, there's a decent chance of an upgrade at the window if you have a high number of loyalty points within your elite tier. After that, AA typically clears the flight down to J1 just before T-24h. If a flight goes from J4 to J6 within the elite upgrade windows (because two seats opened up due to a cancellation, for example), the next time the system completes an upgrade sweep, two passengers will be upgraded off the list, and the inventory will go back to J4.

This has been a fairly reliable pattern for the past couple of years, except on certain routes where they expect last minute sales or want to hold back seats for other reasons. It's fairly rare to get a complimentary upgrade until almost T-24h when there are 4 or fewer seats remaining in J.

Ah interesting! Super helpful, thank you. :) I never noticed that pattern, that's great.

From what I've read so far, is this the correct strategy?

Interested routes: LAX-JFK, SNA-JFK, LAX-HNL

1. Book a flight a month out(?)
2. Monitor the waitlist during the 3 weeks leading up to the flight
3. Change the booked flight to one that has a low or empty waitlist?

I'm not understanding how step 3 works given that you probably have to pay the additional fare since ticket price increases...

Also, unrelated but the AA 933 for January 18 has an empty waitlist with 2 open seats in F! Is this rare?

Miles+copay upgrades come out of C inventory which you can see on expertflyer (using the "awards and upgrades" page ONLY - as C is also used as a revenue fare bucket so flight availability can show C>0 when there is no upgrade space)

Before gate control, AA sometimes clears complimentary upgrades before instrument upgrades (lol) so an EXP's complimentary upgrade can clear before your miles+copay, and unfortunately you have no control over that. Any upgrades at the gate should prioritize instruments over complimentary.

The best you can do is set an experflyer notification for upgrade C and call in to confirm the upgrade if space is available and you are not cleared automatically off the waitlist.

Best gauge of upgrade chances may be how many MCE seats are filled on your flight right now.

Thx. Sounds like I won't know if my upgrade clears until about 24 hours out at best. Right now EF shows about 40 open seats in MCE and 8 open seats in PE.

It might come earlier. All depends if AA opens C in advance, which can happen anytime from now to the flight. Hard to tell on chances since it's also a holiday weekend. If it doesn't clear, hopefully you can at least get the PE seats for free since they will be treated as all normal MCE seat.

Steps 1 and 2 are basically interchangeable. If you're interested in flying LAX-HNL, I would observe a week or two of the waitlists and loads to get a sense of which dates and times tend to be open. Then, book the appropriate flight. If you're traveling for leisure, you obviously have more flexibility with this. Step 3 works up to even a week out. I've found that the cost of my flight rarely changes until a week or two prior, but ymmv.
Let's say you want to fly LAX-JFK on February 20th. You should go and look at how booked the business class cabin is on all the flights that day and book 1. the most empty business class cabin and 2. the emptiest in MCE (bc Platinums and above can choose MCE seats, its a rough estimate of how many people you are competing with for an upgrade). The waitlist is just another tool to aid in this process.
Like I said, this is not a perfect science. It is probably just easier to pay 200 for the upfare in the app.

To my understanding EF would be the best tool for this, but why is the AA seatmap tool (https://www.aa.com/travelInformation...false&from=Nav) not good enough?

AA seatmap vs. EF seatmap makes no difference. The only benefit EF would have in this situation is if there are fewer than 7 first class seats remaining, but not all people booked in F have selected their seat (10 seats showing on seatmap, but EF shows J6). If you want, I'd be happy to discuss this in PM so this thread doesn't get spammed with this discussion.

Aa 2398. Clt-fll
 

EXP with 230,000 LPs

4th on list....did not clear

That's been my experience in December/January for flights. If at the time that I click "Same Day Flight Change" on the app, I have already been upgraded and there is an available first class seat, I am able to same-day confirm into that first class seat for $0. As far as I can tell, once you same day confirm into another first class seat you are good to go, and do not go back into the upgrade pool.

If you have already been upgraded and try to change flights but no first class seats are open, the only option is to Same Day Standby (which would be for first only). The only time I have had that happen (same day standby w/ no first availability after an upgrade) I was "stuck" at the top of the stand-by list since there was nothing to clear into. I talked to the gate agent, and she was able to get me onto the flight but in economy. It seems to be something that the gate agents have to "fix" or else you will never clear for economy, since the system sees you as trying to standby into first.

Hope this makes sense and helps.

AA 933 on Jan 19 has empty waitlist for biz and 2 open seats... Rare? Seems too good to be true.