Take on the upgrade list

I fly 50 legs per year on average and being a Platinum medallion
member on Delta means I have a very good chance on being upgraded on
many of them. A flight from NYC to Chicago, almost always upgraded!!
A flight from Atlanta to Huntsville looks good, too. A short leg into
Fort Wayne is good but there are some flights where an upgrade is as
hard to come by as a second bag of pretzels or another pillow.
Upgrades used to be determined by the gate agent and they had a lot of
latitude in getting their choices moved up but over the last decade
they have gone away with almost all of it. It's all depended on
status, a diamond member gets priority over a platinum, a platinum
over a gold and a gold over a silver. Even within the tiers, the
platinum member who flew 75,200 miles will all behind the platinum
member who flew 98,000.

Here is the list I have come up with of times when your chances of
getting upgraded are worst.

-international flights. Actually this is a Delta rule, they do not
upgrade on any international travel, ever
- cross country flights, especially to Vegas or LA. Get on a flight
to Vegas as a platinum member and you are likely to find yourself in
row 43 by the bathrooms.
- flights leaving on Sunday afternoon or early Monday to/from a major
Delta hub. This is like competing against a Kenyan in a marathon, you
have no shot
-any flight you really want to get upgraded on. Feel hungover, had a
bad night sleep, tight connection?? Get ready to find yourself in a
middle seat in the back next to Tubby and his wife Tubbett


Reasoning is as follows, I figure

The cross country flight is long and people are much more likely to
pay for a business class ticket knowing they will be on a flight for 5
1/2 hours, thus there are no extra seats to get bumped into. A
flight from NY to Detroit is an hour and 20 minutes and even a coach
fare costs a fortune so nobody is going to shell out $2500 to actually
pay for the seat which means you have a great chance to get upgraded
into it.
The flight leaving from a hub on a Sunday or Monday morning is
impossible because those flights are stacked with people who fly more
often than you do and have higher status and thus leapfrog you on the
upgrade line. Because they are flying on Monday morning they are
likely business travelers and when they originate from Detroit or
Minneapolis or Atlanta they likely fly Delta almost exclusively and
thus have accrued a billion miles and status

So my thought is: fly TO the major hubs on a Monday morning and out of
them on a Friday, consider a flexible ticket for the cross country
flight or, at minimum, get economy comfort and go in with no hope for
anything over an ocean