DCA-CLE on Wednesday at 735am. Upgrade was confirmed first thing on Sunday morning, apparently 73 hours in advance. I'm PP with ~180k LPs over the last year, and ~67k for this loyalty year.

Grand cayman to DFW on July 22, 2024.

One seat available.

35 on upgrade list.

I had four people on my PNR but split off to get on the list. Entered the list as No 1, got the upgrade 15 minutes before we boarded and gave it to the wife, so mission successful.

Wife is a low spend EXP and was 17th on the list with her own status. It’s getting tough out there, ladies and gentlemen.

When you have people who are EXP, and just do CC spend it's going to get tougher. On the flip side, it is always entertaining seeing these people at the gate complaining to the gate agent that their upgrades didn't clear,

In general, I suspect those pure cc spend EXPs don't fly very much, so the true road warriors will probably see less of them, but on leisure routes, it will have a material impact. I certainly understand the motivation for AA to take a more holistic view of the relationship with respect to its loyalty program (I also am a beneficiary of that since more than 80% of my LPs have been from my personal AA card the last few years), but it really is changing the game way faster than people thought it would.

I wish you all good fortune in the upgrades to come...

That's why keeping expectations in check are best for us road-warriors, I don't expect UGs anymore, if anything MCE does it for a sub-4 hour flight. Major benefit of status is willingness for AA to open any door when sh*t hits the fan, which it so ever does. This isn't the old days of UGs clearing at T-100 with a fully empty cabin.

I tend to think it's not the switch to LPs but rather the monetization of the cabin. All the carriers are actively selling first now. It's not just AA. I think this is having a bigger impact on upgrade availability than status.

I have many coworkers with no status whatsoever who take the buy-up offers immediately after our CTA books their flights. It's now known even to infrequent travelers that this can be done quite easily and often (though not always of course) for a reasonable price.

Did AA ever fix the long time IT bug that if you were on the upgrade list (like even for auto complementary) you were never going to be offered a buy up? It was that IT restriction just when you tried to apply an SWU and were waiting for it to clear (meaning complementary upgrades would get a buy up offer)? I never actually get a buy up offer for any of my flights.

UA still makes people to fly X amount of segments to make status, I wish AA and DL would do this.

I have a few upcoming trips- I see upgrade offers on the mobile app, even though I've been added to the upgrade list. The thing I notice is once an upgrade clears, the buy-up offers no longer appear. I have a round trip later this week, and one short segment cleared at T-100. The other 3 segments are still in "requested," but no more buy-up offer. I will monitor on my next trip to see if the same happens.

I have found this to be the case as well. One can mitigate to a certain extent by booking two one way trips instead of r/t.

Well that's a first for me...

On a longer hub to hub route too.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8888f0bf9.jpeg

Perhaps 2&3 are linked PNRs, and 4&5 are also linked PNRs???
…. Who knows, but enjoy!

I also cleared MIA-deep South America despite J being zeroed out, so batting 1000 today it seems.

BOS to DFW 7/22 - #3 or 36 on waitlist, only 1 cleared
DFW to BOS 7/33 - #2 on 18 waitlist, one of two that cleared

450k+ rolling LPs

Noticed something odd- Wife and I are traveling today on separate PNRs. We are both EXPs, but I have more rolling 12 month LPs. So I called last week to have our PNRs connected, with the option to disconnect if there was only 1 seat available. I was cleared at T-24 for one of the flights, yet she wasn't. When I checked on EF, there was still 1J seat for sale. When I called AA customer service, I was told one seat is reserved for sale and not available for upgrade, so they split the PNRs. Across the course of the day, I saw 3 more seats open up for sale. This morning when she checked in, she was #1 on list for 4 seats available. I called back, and had the agent again reconnect the PNRs. And now a few hours later, she is #1 for only 1 seat available. Why wasn't she upgraded at the time there were 4 seats available, since I was??!!