Does CO use sweeps for SWUs?
 

I currently have a SWU waitlisted for a flight next year. Does CO run SWU sweeps at any particular time, or could it clear at any time? Basically, when should I be checking my account to see if it's cleared? Thanks.

Once daily sweeps, random times it seems. But due to CO's inferior back-end systems, R (UG bucket) could flip from 0 to 1 during the day, someone could get an EF alert for it (or just see the availability), and snap it up with their own SWU before the sweep is ever run for your WL'd upgrade.

Dynamic waitlisting is unfortunately a thing of the past come March or whenever.

Thanks. And just to verify - upgrades are currently still based on the sponsor's status, right?

I think that's what I've read (seems to hold at the airport at least, as sponsor's status appears to show up on a BP), but have no experience with it personally

Inside the EUA window it is once daily and not at a random time. Outside the window there are not necessarily sweeps at all. I love how difference is automatically inferior.

This thread is about SWUs. EUA is irrelevant here.

If that difference allows someone to bypass the waitlist, it would be.

Yes, please feel free to try and sell how a static daily sweep is superior to dynamic waitlisting...you don't have to defend everything PMCO does you know.

Given the number of reports of CO upgrade space being available but SWU/CR1s not clearing, I would keep an eye on it as regularly as you can. And call to force it if you see it.

Inside the EUA window I believe it makes sense to prioritize those willing to pay for the upgrade over those looking to get the freebie.

There's my one. You're welcome.

In that both can be at play in the same time period it actually isn't irrelevant at all.

That's more of a YBM/TOD discussion, is it not?

Regardless, inside the EUA window, you could still have a flyer who's had a CR-1 waitlisted for 6+ months get trumped by someone who sees R>1 (post-the last sweep) and then applies their own UG instrument. Is that a good thing?

It is 100% irrelevant to the question at hand. Any mention of EUA in this thread is, by definition, off topic. If you want to start a thread about SWUs and EUA, be my guest. But this thread isn't it.

Time to write a script to check inventory at 10-minute intervals...

I always thought this was deliberate, especially when going from RX to R0 right before a scheduled sweep or EUA run.

In my limited CO SWU experience (haven't earned/burned enough on CO to really analyze it), mine either clear right away because R inventory is available at time of ticketing, or they don't clear until 24h before departure. I am batting 1.000 on SWUs, though.

With PMCO, I've gotten used thinking that anything 'dynamic' is bad... for a while it seemed like the new enhanced! :p

EUA Window is a description of a time period 5 days before the flight. It doesn't have to do with the EUA process itself.

FYI this is really easy.

For scripting continental.com, I recommend WWW::Mechanize, which also available for Python speakers at http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/ and for Ruby at http://mechanize.rubyforge.org/.

Every CO page is one big form, and there are multiple submit buttons that cause the page to do different things -- so be careful about supplying the right parameter to submit().

I'm lazy, so I parse the output with BeautifulSoup, then shove the relevant parts into a well-formed XML tree I generate with lxml, which I can serve up via the Web or on a phone app with zero friction.

I run an every-10-minutes cronjob which checks availability and e-mails my phone's SMS address whenever there's a change. If you just tweak a line with grep, you get "e-mail when R space changes" instead. I've been meaning to do this intelligently with a proper phone app, push notifications, etc. but the overhead is hardly worth it.