Does checking in early online decrease your chance of getting an upgrade
 

I was wondering if you check in early to a flight does it decrease your chance of getting a free upgrade since you are already assigned, whereas if you just go to the airline they can manually assign you a seat?

I don't think it does but I could be wrong.

I've had cases where I went to the check in counter and wasn't upgraded. Upon going to the gate I was upgraded after. I've had most of my luck asking the gate counter for upgrades vs at check in.

Checking in early increases your chance of getting an upgrade, but not by much. Having a higher status can help greatly.

CX may offer upgrades at check-in, in the lounge or at the gate, and most likely in the lounge of at the gate. They only offer op-ups at check-in if they are quite sure your upgrade will hold. Even then they may still reverse it at the gate (and it happened before, but very seldom).

If they offer you op-up at check-in, they already processed the op-up list and you are on there, but not because there is no seat left. They will upgrade a higher status passenger to leave a lower cabin seat for you.

Thanks for your response.
What I mean is if I check in early online is it better or check in at the counter for a better chance of upgrade

Hi Happyvoid: I always checked in online early (48 hrs before the flight) and have received many op-up. I don't know what the frequency would be if I don't check in early but I have heard that checking in early improves your chances of being op-up.

This is a myth or perhaps was the case many years ago. I have a 100% guaranteed accurate source on this.

I felt checking in early or not has not got much to do with op up chances at all. CX has rules about op ups, some times when lower classes were heavily oversold, they start op up high tier elite flyers very early and we could even select upgraded seats at olci.
I personally felt most op-ups happens around -3 hours and normally it wouldn't matter if we've been assigned seats or not.
And when flights were not that oversold, it seems CX might need to wait until the last few pax checked in to actually op-up someone, and obviously again, it wouldn't matter if the pax selected been assigned seats or not

I guess I had the wrong assumption about early checking and opt-up but at any case I still got many opt-up even though I usually checked in online. I am only a Silver member but have had many PEY to business opt-up on long distance flights like SFO-HK or HK-SFO.

For most airways, it's the contrary.

There are several factors:
1. You checked in online. That means you checked in early. The BN or SEC starts at OLCI.
2. You purchased PEY. Due to the limited PEY seats, you can get op-upped easier when PEY or Y is oversold.
3. You are lucky. My wife has been a GO and SL the past 10 years or so and only had a birthday upgrade, but not a single op-up on the SFO route. Well, she has been flying in J, and perhaps J-F op-up is not as easy.

I guess SL in J was not good enough for op-ups to F.

There are only 6 F seats but many J seats. Many DMs fly J. So it is not easy for SL to get op-ups from J to F.

OP isn't even Green. Seriously, what's with so many threads of people dreaming for an OP-up. Want to be in business/first class? Then pay for it!

My last 2 opup ex hkg i did olci on the airport bus to the airport. Just cuz i had nth better to do

Non-Marco Polo club members have an almost zero chance of an operational upgrade. I remember watching a friend of mine argue the toss over this for about half an hour. I told him he was wasting his time, and he was.

OP could be OW Emerald with AA, but yeah no status = virtually no chance, but hey you might just get lucky and hit the 0.0000001%. :p:p

I could imagine only when both J and PEY were wide wide open and Y was heavily oversold, which they will start picking single pax in PEY and op up them (all the elites in PEY already upgraded) to J so they could use the PEY seats for Y->PEY op ups.