teeceedee

Hello -

I'm using award miles to purchase a ticket for my S.O from IAH to LGA direct on Thursday morning.

The return flight is Sunday night from DCA to IAH (RJ from LGA to DCA).

I'm 1k and have the Chase Explorer card, and I've had family members successfully CPU tickets with my miles before. How likely do you think this is for that type of flight? Most of my flying is west coast, so I wouldn't know.

Reason I ask is because if a CPU is not at all likely, I'd rather use my non-status AA miles. Thanks!

edcho

IMO, it's pretty hard on this route in general. Not sure about the rates about that specific time of day though. I'm flying on B fare as GS and looks like i'm flying at the back of the plane.... flight is in the evening though.

Air Houston

IAH-LGA and IAH-DCA (both directions) have historically been very, very difficult complimentary upgrades. Those routes are easily my lowest rate of clearance and as a GS I fly in coach about half the time on those routes (and almost never on any other route).

For a while they were selling IAH-LGA in F for a very small premium over economy - and I have no earthly idea why they were doing that as full fare economy was generally much higher priced and the route used to have a lot of Y-B fare passengers. Perhaps with DL flying several times daily on the route some of the paid high fare passengers have disappeared. Recently they have started selling discount coach tickets even without a 3-day stay on these two routes, much to my amazement and my employer's delight. I am not sure how that is impacting upgrade rates, but I wouldn't plan on an upgrade on either of these routes.

fjfv19

I have brutal luck on upgrades in general, RPUs, GPUs, whatever. This is one of the few routes that I don't think I've ever missed an upgrade on in the past two years in 8 attempts, oddly enough, even though many others have no luck at all. The easiest upgrade IME is the realllllly early morning flights on the 738 (been on a 737-7 a few times last year as well). There is one that is 5:15 AM or so out of EWR and one at 5:45 AM out of LGA. The flights at peak times are very, very tough and I got lucky twice with battlefield upgrades. Would be curious to learn what others have seen, however.

Air Houston

Very interesting. Assuming you are a regular schedule business traveler you would typically be going the opposite direction as me. Perhaps there are lots of Elites from IAH but not so many on the NYC end. I do agree that the super early morning flights are the easiest upgrades. There is typically R space on flights before 6 am, regardless of departure city.

teeceedee

Thanks for the feedback! I guess I can call it in, then, since 1k award tickets are at the bottom of the list just above Platinums

UA-NYC

Based on what I saw with my spouse's flight this week going in the other direction - not a chance in hell

fjfv19

All business travel for me on these flights. I do a lot of Tuesday mornings on LGA-IAH. It may be the fact I'm typically on the 5:45 AM or 6:40 AM flight. I've once had to do the 5 PM from LGA to IAH once and it was booked full in first with a 40+ person upgrade list. I was on a Y fare and cleared when someone no-showed.

It is strange because LGA-DEN has been a brutally difficult upgrade for me so it seems the elites are there. I haven't cleared LGA-DEN all year.

Moral of the story for me seems to be the earlier the better for the upgrade situation. Using today for example, 11/16 people seated in first on the 5:45 AM were upgraded in some fashion. For the 5 PM, it is booked full with 38 on the list. Same situation with the 7 PM. This is consistent with my experience on this route. YMMV as always

sanfran8080

I still can't believe I scored a CPU on the IAH-DCA flight last month... Just short of impossible on a regular day.