US Airways first class upgrade APP for US Preferred and AAdvantage Elites
 

Just wanted to give everyone some lesser known info about how the US Airways first class upgrade process works.

As you know, if you don’t get your complimentary upgrade by 24 hrs before your flight you get put on the upgrade list. Many people don’t know that at that point you can still snag first class upgrades without having to rely on the gate agent. If a seat opens up during that 24hr period, it will go to the next Preferred member to check-in or change their seats (regardless of where they are on the upgrade list).

So if you know that a first class seat has opened up, you can just change your seat before anyone else does to grab it. I actually wrote an Android app (“NotiFly Me – For US Preferred” in the Google play store or www.NotiFlyMeApp.com) to automatically check for first class seats on your flight and notify you immediately when one opens up.

I have used the app successfully for myself on my last two flights from DFW to CLT (for some reason I never get upgraded in advance on this leg and the upgrade list gets 15 deep). Just entered my flight info and changed my seat once it told me a seat was available. US Airways always holds at least one seat in the first row for revenue, so at least one usually opens up the day of the flight.

And now that AAdvantage Elites can get themselves on the upgrade list at check-in, they can use the app to snag upgrades as well. Without it, they probably won’t have much luck relying on the gate agent.

If you have an Android phone, I suggest you try it out and let me know if you have success with it.

How soon before an iPhone version is available?

You realize that by publicizing this and writing an app to notify everyone and their mother that a seat has opened up, you are effectively going to work yourself out of getting upgrades this way? There's a reason this isn't talked about constantly on the US forum.

Not for a couple of months at least. I'll let you know when it's available though.

Using the app, I'm not worried about anyone else grabbing a seat before me, even if they know how the system works. Now, If I lose out to someone else using the app who happens to be flying on my same route, then hey, at least that means I wrote a pretty popular app :)

I bet he doesn't know the first rule of Fight Club either.:p

How will this app be any different than Expert Flyer?

The Expert Flyer free service tells you which seats are available for purchase which is very different from which seats have been released for preferred member upgrades. They do have an awards inventory option if you are willing to pay a monthly fee. I don't know where they are getting their data from, so I can't speak to how real time the inventory is with respect to US Airways seats available for preferred or elite member upgrades on the day of the flight.

How often does your app check?

The android page says the app "Offers in-app purchases". What's that about? Does it cost to set up a search?

Searches are free. The in-app purchase is to optionally disable ads if desired.

The frequency of checking for seats is configurable in the settings. Anything from every minute to every half hour.

The ExpertFlyer Free services shows which physical seats are available for assignment, not purchase. Our Pro subscriptions offer both physical seat availability (Seat Map) and paid ticket availability (Flight Availability), both with alerts (Flight and Seat Alerts respectively).

Okay I downloaded the app. I'll test it out for my flight Monday in the event I don't get the UG at the gold window. I just set up a couple of sample searches.

PS ~ You don't need to work too hard to have a better product than EF. They only allow one "free" alert at a time.

You can have up to 30 alerts at a time with a Premium subscription. ExpertFlyer accesses the airline reservation systems directly, which has a cost for every search, so we offer a value service instead of a free one.

Screen scraping of airline websites may be free, but since American's data distribution team has gone after all screen scrapers of their website in the past, you can now expect the same reaction to scrapers of the US Airways website as well.

If this is not central scraper and in this case doesn't have to be, it is just individual client making HTTP requests. Not only it is impossible to distinguish, it would cause blocking of their own application.

The issues of mobile data usage and battery life aside, United has shown that a cease and desist letter is all that is necessary to shut down a screen scraping app. No blocking necessary.

I, personally, am not too concerned about small increases in data and battery usage when the alternative is missing out on an upgrade and having to sit in coach. But that's why things like that are configurable. As far as shutting down any app, it is pretty hard to do if it doesn't rely on any backend server. It can be removed from the app store, but once an app is on your phone it's on your phone until you remove it.