intuition

So I guess the "If not, contact CS" clause is not a solicitation for people to start nagging CS about upgrades...

My guess is that they have some kind of deadline. If that first email is sent at T-7d it suggests that they have a scheduled waitlist procedure at that time. I assume they want to be efficient and not clear individual upgrades from waitlist one by one, and insted do all att T-7d.

All not cleared at T-7d get the email. Then they will/might have some unscheduled checks of the waitlist in the time frame T-7d and T-36h, but nothing is promised. At T-36h control is handed over, then upgrades are processed according to whatever procedure they follow.

I think this is pretty much as it always have been. IME that email is not an indicator of anything new, just that they want to be a bit more transparent about the process.

FFlash

Pretty varying experiences here. And my tons of upgrades have cleared all in very varying pattern too, saying there is no pattern. All I can say is that I have never used the upgrade tool, I have always called CD to process and a few times app tool for instant processing when available.

Transparency would be nice but i seems to be random science here. So far as my numerous upgrades have all cleared as plat member (except one seat on a full MiA flight where others did clear), I am happy however

aapee

Had a couple of vouchers expiring on Saturday. Tried to upgrade my existing bookings, but no availability, even for the December flights. In the end waitlisted a couple of MAD flights (June, December), both cleared today.

Definitely less upgrade availability to LHR than before.

FlyingFinn

Yeah, noticed this very same thing within the last few weeks. Cannot even waitlist the one flight in April I really would like to upgrade (well not online at least, maybe I'll call and ask if I can be arsed).

I have a feeling that this will lead me into wasting my precious Lumo upgrades on nonsensical flights to ARN.

aama

Called Plat line again today about our May 6th AY5 which is J25 (this is 100% fact don't ask). They told me that last time they requested it, it was denied due to high season(!?) and that they can request it again, but aren't sure when the rev.mgmt. will have another go at it.

finnishlad

I have several LHR-HEL-LHR flights to upgrade with vouchers and points (May,Sept,Oct,Jan,Feb) and none were I able to upgrade online as no availability. Just two flights finnair platinum did manage to upgrade, rest are on waiting list.

CeruleanBlue

I'm on that flight and when I selected my seat a couple of weeks ago there was plenty of space to choose from. I have a paid business class ticket though.

aama

Yep I have an inside source that told me that it's J25 at the moment so very frustrating not to clear already.

Good to know that you're my eyes in the biz cabin in case they would take-off with empty seats and no upgrade

aama

And today the magic happened! With little over 3 weeks to departure AY rev.mgmt. decided that J25 is enough room to upgrade us.

So to answer the original question: no the vouchers are not worth nothing

ps. looking forward to my first LH J with AY!

jimaras08

I booked 11:53pm TXL-HEL-CPH online for +1 and me. At 11:55pm I used 4 vouchers to upgrade. At 11:58pm I got my new upgraded tickets on my e-mail. Thank you AY+!

r2d2

I just experienced upgrade availability reappearing. I'll be taking AY 100 on New Year's Eve and the AY site showed over 5 available upgrade seats when booking the flight. I didn't have enough points to upgrade back then and while waiting, the availability went suddenly to 0. Once it got back to 5+ and then quickly back to 0. Last week my points balance reached 50000 and I started checking upgrade availability on the app every day. This morning there was availability, the web site showed again 5+. For some reason upgrading on the web site didn't work but the lovely chat agent was able to process the upgrade. And now again the flight seems to have no upgrade availability...

intuition

That kind of behaviour makes me think the web tool is having intermittent connection issues to the inventory system. Just a guess, but when it comes to F, they never used to be that active.

niksal

So I’ve been wondering what to do with my upgrade vouchers. I have been looking for flights to different places, but decided on Singapore. I saw for a long time upgrade availability only on Nov 22nd to Singapore and Nov 26th from Singapore. 2 seats in both directions. Yesterday I booked, and now there was more than 5 seats on both flights, but nothing on any other day that I randomly checked. Did not check the whole autumn as I have previuosly done. Some especially bad weekend in Singapore that weekend?

CeruleanBlue

Nope. I had the same experience for my vouchers in July and August. I waitlisted and was cleared within 24 hrs. Seems like people report very little and varying upgrade availability on long haul these days.

aama

Oh how wish that we had access to the F class data like C on AA no need for the tool then.