s0ssos

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.

shuigao

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).

s0ssos

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.

moondog

That's some seriously twisted logic.

s0ssos

I do not think you understand statistics.

pinniped

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.

weero

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

pinniped

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.

s0ssos

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

weero

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 .

deniah

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

pinniped

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.)

moondog

You kill me.

JerryFF

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.

lhrsfo

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.