argh_name_in_use

Scientist who worked with animals here. Sorry, but that statement is not correct. In some areas, yes, we can replace animal experiments with in vitro experiments or with computer simulations. In others, no. We need animal disease models to study different diseases, potential drugs and procedures to deal with them.

And that's not even getting into basic research. If you're studying behavioral dynamics in a group of animals for example, you can't just replace them with a "scientific advancement" - the whole point is that you don't know how they react or how they do something. That's just one of many examples, others involve dissection of tissues to learn more about how cells work in the complex environment of a real-live tissue rather than in the grossly simplified environment of a petri dish. Or harvesting specific types of cells from animals. Most cell lines won't replicate indefinitely, you can't just keep using the same batch over and over again. There are countless other examples, these are just a few that I encountered.

Congratulations, that's awesome! :) So... now what? Postdoc? Industry? Finance? DISNEYLAND?

u/afrozenfyre is very much correct. Domestically, US airlines tend to give away upgrades for free to their elites, and this system is based on your status (Platinum trumps Gold, etc), your fare class (more or less how expensive your ticket was) and, at least on United, as a tie-breaker when you checked in.

Internationally, even top-tier elites need to use miles or so-called instruments (upgrade certificates) to get on the upgrade waitlist. It's rather rare to get upgraded for free here. In the past 3 years, I've gotten a total of two "op-ups", as these upgrades are called - and this was out of 400 flights.

Have you noticed any impact of the recent, substantial increase in multi-city fares? Or do you typically scan for simple round-trip itineraries?

Your optimism is great, but you haven't really answered the question, which was "How are you addressing this issue", not "do you think this will be overcome". I'm in the camp mentioned by the OP and would love to hear your thoughts on this.