why have "possible" upgrades?
 

I think the possibility of upgrades makes people madder than happier. But airlines love to sell everybody on the possibility of getting upgrader to first-class (dependent on availability, whether your flight is leaving on-time, where the sky is clear, whether the baggage crew has showed up on time that ).
And hotels are well.

They want to be able to use their leftovers for goodwill/rewards for loyal members.

I feel it is like salaries. There is no such thing as making everybody happy. There is only distributing it in such a way that most people aren't unhappy.

Don't think this is right. To me the majority would be happier as long as the probability of upgrade is "high enough" (of course, what's high enough is subjective).

But probability doesn't matter to one person. Probability means across multiple people. Across multiple flights. Even the most frequent fliers among us only take hundreds of flights, which isn't enough to make any "probability" statistically meaningful

So you have people who hit almost 100%, and people who hit almost none.

That's some seriously twisted logic.

I do not think you understand statistics.

I've gone back and forth on this (with respect to domestic U.S. upgrades).

Long ago, I was an AA Plat and I lamented the system of rationing upgrades via 500-mile e-credits. I assumed UA elites flew F all the time while I had to pick and choose when I wanted to upgrade. Then I had a couple UA Premier Exec (not 1K) years where I didn't see much F, followed by a 1K year were I did see a lot of F. Eventually I lost all of that and went back to AA, traveling pretty much at the Gold level.

I came to the conclusion that AA's rationing system works better for mid- and low-tiers than the unlimited system. I've fairly certain that AA Gold gets more upgrades than UA Silver, and AA Golds are more accepting of the rate they do get.

I was never AA EXP so I can't compare vs. 1K. I suspect at both tiers it's pretty good as long as you aren't do a lot of hub-to-hub.

You think that it is wise to leave such a bold claim in immediate vicinity of evidence to your own unfamiliarity with the matter :confused::confused::confused:?
I'd love to see where you have dug up that definition of 'probability'.

If there is indeed discord out there among the legions of high-tier fliers, I think it's less about probability and more about a lack of transparency in the underlying process for determining which seats become available for elite upgrades.

We've understood since the dawn of time that airlines would love to sell their F seats. They'd love to sell them in the F fare bucket to corporate buyers, often at a hefty discount from "rack" rate but still a very high fare. Next, they'd love to sell some as Y-UP type fares, still mostly bought by corporate buyers at high fares. Maybe in some markets, they dip down into midrange Y fares (e.g. Q-UP, M-UP, etc.), selling them to the occasional leisure traveler with a few bucks to spare. We get all of that.

I think the thing that has irritated elites more than anything is that in recent years they've added a new category: selling them to any non-elite at OLCI for a relatively small monetary amount. (Midcons for under $100, for example.) Those were the former elite upgrade seats. The airline is saying "We'd rather collect a few bucks for this seat than let a Gold/Plat member sit here for free." Those are the cases where an elite is looking at the seatmap 48 or 72 hours prior to departure, seeing empty F seats, and thinking "Why won't some of these clear for upgrade?"

I've been mid/low tier for the past few years, so I don't waste a lot of energy getting mad about it. (In fact, I buy these "TOD" upgrades from time to time.) But to me that's the biggest shift in the upgrade game in recent years: they're going to monetize almost every seat instead of leaving a few for upgrades.

You use fancy words but do you know what any of them mean? Any idea what statistically significant means?

Haha.

I have to agree that I have no idea how'd I explain it to someone who doesn't know what probability means.

Statistically significant means that you can reject the null hypothesis to your assumption with a certain confidence level which is itself a probability. The number of samples is nowhere nearly as weighing in this process as is the randomness of the sampling, the strength of the tested hypothesis, and the required confidence interval, and the ability to find the distribution of the stochastic events.
To claim that from a sample of 100 flights, one cannot draw statistically significant conclusions is mind bogglingly far removed from any mathematical reality :rolleyes: .

this s0s0s gentleman has a tendency to make .... erm.. interesting threads

Probability slapfight aside, my take is still this:

- Elites do want upgrades. If you remove that from the program, people will be less happy than they are with programs that offer some upgrading. So the answer, at least in the case of the three U.S. majors, isn't going to be "no more upgrades, ever."

- I think greater transparency into the process, even if it doesn't change existing probabilities, would make elites happier. Even if raw numbers or formulas aren't revealed, a brief overview about when and why seats are held for sale, held for kiosk upgrades, or released to elite upgrades would be helpful. (Just a bit of qualitative information would go a long way.)

You kill me. :D

The above comments are simply contradictory to basic statistical thinking and analysis. Of course, for every individual event, with two options, it is either A or B. But conventional thinking is based on the concept that over a certain number of trials, A occurs a certain % (=X) and B occurs (100-X) %. This allows people to make decisions in a wide variety of situations. To say it has no meaning because, for an individual event, it must be either A or B simply fails to understand the basic concept of statistics and their applications.

Furthermore, you cannot say a priori how large a sample size is needed to make a probability statistically meaningful. There are many factors involved, and hundreds of cases may well be sufficient. There are many statistical parameters that allow one to determine whether a given probablility is meaningful - what the "margin for error" is, for example. One such parameter is standard deviation.

These are just a couple of examples of why the above statements by the OP therefore reflect a fundamental lack of understanding of the principles of statistics and probability. Or if he/she does understand, then instead he/she is intentionally misusing or distorting his interpretation to arrive at an inaccurate conclusion.

I think you should assume you will not get upgraded. Then, if the unlikely happens, you're happy. If as a 1K I flew UA assuming I was going to be upgraded, I'd be unhappy most of the time.

Your top tier status folks may expect every upgrade to clear, however most mid and low level elites see it as a perk.

As a delta plat, my upgrade percentage is about 75% now, and I am quite happy.

Worst case, I know that I can select Comfort Plus/economy comfort seats for free, and will have free drinks on the flight along with the free premium movies.

If it is a long flight and I must absolutely get the upgrade, i am ok with paying for it or using a certificate.

If there were no unlimited upgrades.... I would not be flying delta almost exclusively.

I don't know if "standard deviation" is the same as margin of error. I don't think it is.
Actually, in most fields they do determine how large a sample size is needed to make something statistically significant. If they didn't do that, I don't know that there would be many jobs for statisticians. In many fields the p value is arbitrarily set at 0.05.

I don't think you understand statistics. Ever heard of "n=1"?

Actually, it is pretty simple. If a person were not upgraded for any flight out of their 100 flights, would you say they can draw the conclusion that there are no upgrades? How would they speak to someone else who has been upgraded all of their flights?

I haven't gotten any upgrades for my last 10 AA flights. Probably 50% for my last US Air flights. And 3/5 for my last Delta flights. I can speak to someone and compare stats, but it really doesn't mean anything. I would comment that AA never upgrades me. They would say something like AA often upgrades me.
If I flew 100, you are saying that means my statement would carry so much worth that invalidates his statement? I don't think so.

I wonder what is the probability that you are writing all this rubbish just to get a rise out of someone, As we all know , satistics can prove whatever you want them to !!

I'll just go out on a limb and say that upgrades aren't normally-distributed random events. They're driven by algorithm.

So I may be 0 for 100 and you may be 10 for 10, and luck (or distribution of random events) has absolutely nothing to do with it.

In a similar vein, it's comparable to how data about IDB or lost baggage is lumped together to make those events appear incredibly rare and randomly distributed across all events, when in fact they aren't.

walk up / standby / change is possible

but hotel upgrades (including walk ups) are more common and easier

While generally a very good lecture ^ ... I disagree on this part.

If you do not know the distribution of the events, you cannot even conclude a posteriori how large the likelihoods are. And if you know the distribution, you can calculate with decent accuracy how large your sample size must be.

But for most natural cases with Normal Distribution, you are overall spot on.
I see. "No upgrades" is a very strong hypothesis - much like for gravity that all heavy bodies attract each other - it would need immense testing to get it meaningful.

But if you fly on times of the day and on all days of the week, and in many booking classes and you did not get upgraded once in your last 100 flights, to say that upgrades happen in less than 10% of all cases would hit very hight on a Student's t or F test.
You can illustrate it from a trivial comparison: of you assume that the anti-hypothesis is true (>=10% upgrades), then for the worst case, you chances of NOT getting upgraded on a flight are 90% or 0.9. The chance that you do not get upgraded once in 100 flights is hence 0.9_to_the_power_of_100 or 0.0026%.
For the 5% hypothesis this grows to 0.6% and for the 1% hypothesis to 37%.

Evidently to say 0% would be nonsensical. But 1% is - while unscientific - already quite plausible.

I get what OP is saying in that people expect upgrades and don't get them feel worse than if they never even had a chance at one.

I think the biggest issue is time... what I mean is there are people here that started flying pre-consolidation and load factors were in the 50% range on most flights and upgrades were practically automatic, and are now upset when their upgrade percentage is far lower.

Then there are the more recent fliers who may have only been true road warriors the last few years and are more accustom to sitting in Y and think of upgrades more as a treat than an expectation.

Obviously there are people who have been flying for years that have adjusted just fine to the consolidated industry and people who just hit the lowest tier status for the first time ever and can't understand why they aren't being upgraded on their Monday morning flight from LGA to ORD.

Just my thoughts on the matter

Well, to someone who flies often it is obvious that upgrades are dependent on which flight. Or to someone who stays in lots of hotels.

If you want a good shot at an upgrade take some random US Airways flight with AA status. But if you are flying Delta out of Atlanta, just give up before you even start.

The issue with a lot of these companies is that upgrading isn't effortless. Because sometimes you aren't even put on the upgrade list unless you specifically request it (like with the AA/US merger, and code-share flights). With Marriott you have to ask for an upgrade-they don't like to hand them out, apparently.

This makes people unhappy, because they have to conscious remember to ask for an upgrade, and then get rejected.

You think that and you feel that? Did you do that thing, you know, where you spend some time researching to see if there's any data to back up the ideas that you're pulling out of your ahhh thin air?

Probably more than you. Do you have any research? Or is it just your "feelings"?