I recall using some third party tool last year that would show you how full business is, which helps gauge upgrade availability and how much to bid. You just needed to input the flight number and travel date. Can’t seem to find it anymore. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?

Do you mean https://expertflyer.com/ ?

I won't tell you how much to bid but a free seat alert will give you a reasonably accurate idea of seat availability.

Hmm that’s not it. It was a free tool. I’ll do some searching to see if I can find it again and share it here. It was pretty helpful the one time I used it. I saw business was basically empty and bid $300 and got it!

Here’s that tool for anyone who might find it helpful:

https://blog.awardfares.com/seatmaps/

Upgraded flight, credit to TK experiences.
 

Has anyone had any experience buying the cheapest Go fare and successfully bidding an upgrade to Plus and crediting to TK (or I guess any other programs)? Does it credit under the Plus or original fare class? I know it should credit under original but experiences with Lufthansa and others show that it may credit based on upgraded fare type (in case of C on LH, nothing was credited since apparently it books into P and none for TK)

Original fare. They only make a seating update in the DCS, no actual change of class. The bonus that is associated with the upgrades is only given to EB members....

thanks. Then buying Plus it is to get some accrual bonus before SK leaves Star.

Put in a bid today for EWR-ARN for business
According to ExpertFlyer there was only one free seat left in Business.
My $700 bid was the winning bid (SAS Upgrade suggested the opening bid was $420)
Interestingly enough, they were selling the seat for 92k SEK or 1,25M EB points up until the auction ended.

I don't think I would have had the highest bid, so I am wondering what other factors were at play?

ARN-ORD - Minimum bid when I initially bid was $500. I went $551. Bid price dropped to $300 for awhile, but I stuck with my bid. At check-in, minimum bid was $790. But, I won! And got the last seat in the cabin. First time flying SAS J and I was overall impressed. Great food, but pillow, blanket, amenity kit, and the staggered seats left a bit to be desired. Def better than LH J though ;)

Got upgraded to business on JFK to CPH. $300 min. bid from a really cheap PE ticket.

Do you know what lounge access SK offers for business pax ex-JFK?

Nothing at T7 for free. You could head to T1 (LH) or T4 (AI), but I am heading straight to T7 as late as I can.

There is the former BA lounge* repurposed now as a paid lounge.

*Except for the Concorde room, which is now a lounge for EI

Here's some more info on my tracking of minimum bids for a roundtrip SK927 CPH-BOS (Wednesday) and SK928 BOS-CPH (Saturday night). See posts 369, 376 and 401.

I've been tracking minimum bids for Go to Plus and Go to Business class for both legs of the trip. For ease of use, I've now anonymously published my Google Sheet in HTML here.

What you will see are minimum bids for Economy to Plus and Economy to Business for both flights. In the last week before departure, I've also started checking SAS.se and ExpertFlyer (EF) to see how many seats are (theoretically) available.

Some observations:

• EF and SAS website (by doing a dummy booking) report different availability almost all the time.
• SK927 CPH-BOS Wednesday 18 October:
  • EF: Business 6 open, Plus 0 open.
  • SAS.se: Business 0 open, Plus 0 open.
• SK928 BOS-CPH Saturday 21 October:
  • EF: Business 8 open, Plus 1 open.
  • SAS.se: Business 5 open, Plus 6 open.
• What the latter differenence in availability might suggest is that there's a nearly-full Plus cabin, but with enough bids from Plus to Business to allow SAS to sell the Plus seats again.
• Fluctuations of minimum bids:
  • SK927 CPH-BOS Wednesday 18 October: minimum bids remained basically the same 44 - 11 days before departure, then increased.
  • SK928 BOS-CPH Saturday 21 October: minimum bids have fluctuated a lot in the 40+ days before departure. They have dropped (often on a Tuesday) and risen again several times.

Regarding my own bidding strategy: I always value comfort on overnight flights more highly than daytime flights, so to me the westbound daytime flight feels overpriced at minimum 3,500SEK/18,000 points from Go to Plus or minimum 9,800SEK/44,000 points from Go to Business. The overnight return is looking not only cheaper but also better value at minimum 1,500SEK/13,000 points from Go to Plus and minimum 4,200SEK/33,000 points from Go to Business.

My bid? Well, I'll tell you if I'm successful. ;)

This is brilliant. Great observations. I have also found SAS site and expert flyer rarely matching but I do think you may be right on the plus who have bid for business. Thanks for the updates. Amazing.

My bid of €182 (minimum was shown as 180) for Go to Plus on CPH-LAX was accepted 5 hours 44 minutes before departure. Traveling on EB award ticket without EB status.