Have platinum status. Looking to book a ticket JFK-LAX on a Thursday. Should I book main or go ahead and pay for premium out of pocket? Upgrades would be hard to come by on this route?

There is almost a zero chance of an upgrade on that route as a Plat, especially on a Thursday. I’d take the buy-up upgrade, if its reasonable

I have a bunch of AA giftcards I need to use. Can I use the giftcards to pay for an upgrade? Would you buy main economy hoping to buy up with an upgrade for cheaper or just pay for premium economy out of the gate and see if maybe there is a reasonable business upgrade offer?

you’ll have exp priority but be behind most other exps with higher rolling lp balances because your manager isn’t earning exp in year and thus likely has a very low lp balance. In theory you could be ahead of other exps if they earned nearly all of their lps in the previous status year more than 12 months ago but that’s unlikely.

Anyone been having issues with SWUs recently?
I know confirmation can be a crap shoot, but I'm an EXP (with ~300k rolling 12 month) flying ORD to LHR later this week. Still ~50% of J avail, but upgrade still not cleared. Meanwhile gave 2 SWUs to family members travelling same route 3 weeks later, one PLT (with <50k rolling 12 month) and one no status. Their upgrades cleared a week ago.
Also, it looks like of the 6 upgrades I had with an expiration of March 31 2026, 5 are now marked as redeemed. I have only used 1 so far (not including the 2 above that have been confirmed, but travel not yet taken place).

EDIT: Just checked my AAdvantage activity. Confirming that it now shows 4 SWUs used just under a week ago. They were 100% not used by me. Will report back once I figure out what is going on.

Just FYI but SWU's are deducted as soon as the upgrade is confirmed, not when travel takes place. So if you've used 1, and your two family members have used 2, it seems that AA is one off.

Thanks. Has it always been that way or did it change recently? Looking back through my Aadvantage activity it seems that some upgrades are marked as entries in advance (obv when upgrade cleared), but I could swear that others (that also cleared in advanced) were marked in my activity for day of travel.

Anyway, as to the original mystery. My upgrade has still not cleared, but agent told me that they took 2 sets of SWUs for my family members for the same leg instead of one by mistake (not even sure how this would be possible). They have said they will cancel one of the pairs, but nothing has happened yet.
Still unclear how they upgraded before me, but that is the mystery of SWUs I suppose!

For SWUs it has always been this way. Otherwise you could have say 4 SWUs in your account but request and confirm upgrades for 10 different flights in the future and then have all sorts of things go haywire on the day of departure when you don't have the SWUs in your account.

If any of your SWUs didn't clear until the day of departure then that could be a reason they're not pulled until the flight date.

Different flights on different dates, and the day of travel matters big time. If their flight is on a Tuesday and yours is Thursday for example then it makes sense why AA may have released some C space in advance for theirs but not yours.

After a couple of calls to EXP support I managed to get the extra set of SWUs they took from me back. No one has any idea how it happened (though it is interesting that the recipients of the upgrades can't view the seat map for their flight on their mobile apps since the upgrades cleared, only the website), but pretty happy that they were able to resolve what seems to be some kind of edge case relatively quickly.

OMA - MIA 4099
2 on list for two seats both cleared

And two upgrades have been erroneously marked as used again...

LGA - RSW Weekend before Thanksgiving T-27, LP: ~360k

Upgrades were selling for ~$288 until T-100 when they dropped to $144

Ballpark how many seats were open when they dropped the price and when your upgrade cleared? I have to imagine that it was J7.

I didn’t check EF, but when I looked at the seat map before the UG it was around 50% full of 16 seats. Checking 15 minutes after the UG cleared there were 6 open seats, all but one were occupied not too long after check-in. (1 cleared at the gate)

- Flight tomorrow, 3 of us traveling. I’m PPro, my wife is Plat, and son has no status.
- split res so my son is with me, my wife on her own.
- wife’s upgrade cleared at T24 and she has an assigned seat in FC.
- upgrades did not clear for my son and I.

can only surmise that there was one seat available and she got it, while we got skipped because of 2 on the reservation. If that is truly the case, would switch our res splitting strategy in the future.

have rub into this at the airport when they ask whether you want to split up with one seat available, but first time this has happened to us ahead of time. And not that it should matter because I have a higher status, but I also have more LP than her….

wife said that there was one additional seat showing as available on the seat map (but certainly understand that it doesn’t necessarily indicate one available for upgrade)