Going to use Series 10 award for UG. Planned travel is out 2/27/09 and return 3/12/09. Intl OP desk said 2/26 can be confirmed now, but must waitlist for 2/27 and 3/12 if those are my dates.

Asked agent her best judgment of clearing waitlist. She replied "this is a newer route so we don't have lots of load info history yet. Any release of seats might not occur until day before flight".

Does anyone have any experience with this route and UG chances?

I personally would go a day earlier if it meant confirmed BF. Is there a significant fare difference between the days?

No it's the same fare. Just trying to not be on the road more than I have to.

This far out you really can't tell. It seems logical that you'll have better luck on a Thursday than a Friday. Current availability bears that out.

You can probably try to track this information yourself using the pda.continental.com/info website to look at the upgrade standby list.

I would check each flight shortly before the 24-hour mark at which point you can see the # of upgrades vis-a-vis the booking level of the flight (e.g., 35/48). If the flights are frequently close to full at that point with few upgrades cleared then that means it's probably a tough route. (Of course it could also mean that few people waitlisted for an upgrade in the first place given the steep co-pays...)

At the 24 hour mark nonrevs start getting added to the upgrade standby list and so I think the PDA website data becomes incrementally less useful, although I don't think the nonrev upgrades will actually clear until shortly before departure.