Yeah that is the most frustrating part. Then you walk through the F cabin and see people in the previously available seats without a MP account on their BPs and know they just paid tens of dollars to upgrade.

If American had a flight to Asia out of SEA or if Delta would allow SWUs to be used on reasonably priced economy fares I would switch so fast you'd hear a sonic boom.

I don't even bother checking anymore, since I'm SFO and EWR based. 0 for forever. My ex EWR flights are the businessperson's Sunday afternoon specials, and when I used to look I was always in the teens on the list.

bt

CPU % static for me 2013 vs 2012. I've experienced a noticable improvement in operations and in-flight staff since 1st quarter of last year.

This.

My domestic flights are pretty much all transcons, IAD-SFO/LAX so I don't even bother checking. At his point I just redeem miles if I really want the upgrade.

You shouldn't make that assumption, despite what others on this board will try to tell you. Lots of ways to get into the F cabin without an upgrade including paid F, sponsored certificates (GPUs, RPUs) and miles. And for the record I'm at 85% out of EWR, including an upgrade on a mileage ticket.

Thanks for bringing in some logic back to the thread.

Mine have gone down this year below even what they were last year. It may be that because I'm paying similar amounts if not slightly more for my fares, the classes of those fares have fallen.

E.g. $600 for a mid-con in T, when last year that would have been $550 for a V or $600 for a Q. I'm also seeing markets where the T fare is double what the S or W fare was last year.



Technically, V is still a discounted economy fare rather than an expensive fare ;). It's not on the same scale as S/T/K/L/G, but it's also much more discounted than Q/E/U/M/H/Y/B.

However, I'll add that my success on V and Q fares this year when I've booked them is very poor.

Doing pretty well with upgrades, but the vast majority have been instrument supported. For CPUs I'm 2/3, with the one miss coming on the SEA-IAD redeye on a Sunday evening. I was #1 on the list after upgrades had been doled out.

Truth be told, for that flight I was much happier in 7A on the 319 than I would have been in 1A because of legroom limitations.

Not for me. Sitting in the back a lot. I typically book a few weeks out and can pretty reliably predict whether the CPU will clear based on the current load in the F cabin and my fare class.

While this is probably the subject of a different thread, there's clearly something afoot on some of these flights where I'm way down the list. This week, DEN-FLL flight. Flight was mid-day and mid-week to a tourist destination in the height of spring break season. This was not a typical Thursday or Friday night hub-to-hub flight. I finished #7 on the upgrade list on a pmUA 757 (24 seats in F). According to the mobile app, about half the folks in F were "upgraded" by some means or another. The other half apparently "booked" some variant of F or don't show on the mobile app as upgraded.

There's no way to convince me that:

• A dozen people paid a full F fare to sit up front on a four hour flight.
• There were really 17 or 18 people ahead of me on the CPU list--it's highly unlikely that there were that many Y or B fares, or GSes, or even 1Ks on higher fare classes.

So I'm forced to conclude either they are (a) extremely successful at selling F seats at reduced rates, either through V-UP type fares or ToDs, either at booking or at check-in, and/or (b) the CPU algorithm isn't really as advertised. I'm slowly becoming convinced that (b) is a possibility as well somehow.

Except when you see 5 seats available when looking at the upgrade list and the open seats in the seatmap and then glance at the BPs of the pax who now occupy those seats when they filled without moving the UG list.

Same day change? I'm not trying to "make excuses", but people are very quick to jump to the good old "TOD!!!". Were there some? Probably. All 5 that you saw? Probably not.

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I'm seeing this too. Nearly the entire cabin is upgrades and as a 1K I end up #8 on the list for SFO-BOS the other day....

Gold here. Lots of success on short- to medium-hauls, and on a flight to HNL; long-hauls have been no-gos. (Except one transcon where an amazing dude asked me to switch with him from the Y exit row so he could sit with his friend -- what do we call that, a friend-up?)

If y'all have a spare moment, consider tracking your upgrade success at diditclear.com :D

If the reports on DidItClear are representative, Silver and Gold rates look similar (~30%), as do Plats and 1K's (~60%). To me, this suggests flights are trimodal in terms of F availability, which would make sense to me.

All I know is that PMUA upgrades were pretty dependable; if you were #3 on the list with 3 seats remaining there was an excellent chance you would get the upgrade. I was almost 100% on domestic UGs out of SEA. Under the COdbaUA model if I am #3 on the list with 5 seats remaining I know I am not getting the UG and my overall UG rate has dropped in half and often not even close.

I get the same day change idea but those pax who are switching flights have to be switching off another flight. So there shouldn't really be a net increase or decrease in F seats available because of SDC. I think one reasonable scenario is that typically pax SDC to earlier flights throughout the day at relatively consistent rates which would mean the last flight or two of the day should have an abundance of available F seats. Not sure that is the case.