Two weeks ago American Airlines detailed changes coming for the AAdvantage program in 2024. One of those changes was ‘upgrades on select partner airlines’.
While Star Alliance (United, Air Canada, Lufthansa and others) has had an upgrade product that allowed members to use their miles for upgrades across member airlines, American’s oneworld and Delta’s SkyTeam haven’t had this.
- American Airlines has offered the ability to use miles in a limited fashion to upgrade on British Airways and Iberia, and not even other joint venture airline partners even though Qantas upgrades were talked up at the start of 2016.
- American and Alaska offer reciprocal upgrades as a benefit to each others’ elite members.
American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER Business Class
While American declined to offer any details of the new option for upgrades on partner airlines, I wrote that I expected this to be the long-delayed oneworld alliance upgrade program.
And, indeed, oneworld says that alliance upgrades will finally launch this year. According to oneworld’s Vice President of Customer Experience, “I expect that we will announce something later this year. We are working through (the timeline) at the moment.”
- At launch “only a handful” of airlines will participate. We know that American Airlines will be one of them. The alliance is now based at American’s headquarters in Dallas.
- It isn’t likely to be a consistent product across airlines, with the alliance just “provid[ing] the framework and the infrastructure” while “the airlines will decide of how they want to do it” on a largely bilateral basis as is the case for award pricing today.
British Airways Club Suite
The keys here are going to be:
- what fare you’re required to buy to upgrade a paid ticket (whether a full fare is necessary, or discount tickets can be upgraded)
- how many points will be required
- what inventory is made available (how likely you are to be able to upgrade)
- when upgrades will clear (at time of booking if available, or only closer to departure)
Cathay Pacific Business Class
American and Alaska have among the best reciprocal upgrades in the world, allowing upgrades on a nearly reciprocal basis where American elites can upgrade on Alaska flights on a similar basis to Alaska’s own elites and vice versa and where Alaska top elites have been provided with confirmed upgrade instruments for some American flights.
Even there it’s not perfect. For instance, Alaska Airlines members haven’t had the ability to spend miles to upgrade on American, and American’s members haven’t been able to confirm upgrades in advance on Alaska.
Usually upgrades on partner airlines have required buying full fare tickets, making them only of very limited use. And in some cases it hasn’t been possible to confirm even those upgrades at time of booking, with some airlines restricting availability until for instance within 30 days of travel. Since some airlines don’t allow upgrades more than a few days in advance, even participating in a product like this would require rethinking their upgrade philosophy.
The bar for alliance upgrades to meet and exceed world standard is excruciatingly low, so hopefully this product won’t disappoint.
Someone should remind oneworld that AA HDQ is in Fort Worth.
Forget upgrading other airlines. Does anyone ever upgrade AA’s own fares or even know how to? It seems only available from an unrealistically high “full fare” economy class.
I recently received a surprise complimentary upgrade from economy to premium economy flying LAX-LHR on BA as AA EXP, and was similarly upgraded on the return flight. I didn’t receive any notice other than mysterious change of seat assignment (happening separately). I hadn’t heard of this before and still can’t find any news on it – is this a thing and if so on what basis is the upgrade made?
@Michael it was probably an Operations Upgrade due to not selling enough of the seats up front so the weights & measurements for the flight are off. This necessities moving people forward: Econ>Prem>J>F
They move BAEC then OW Elites up a cabin and if it’s really bad then they target non premium cabin non FF pax as well ( in the hope that bumping them will encourage future higher spend). .
Irrelevant of status level you only get moved up one cabin grade.
BA are loathe to give free upgrades but it’s been more common than usual of late. Small data set I know but I’ve had a PX>J and an unheard of J>F in the last 9-10 months opposed to zero upgrades in the preceding 6 years of being a BAEC Silver/ OW Sapphire
You beat me to it @Penguindude. AA’s HQ are indeed in Fort Worth.
@Michael another likely scenario to what @Clayton mentioned is that economy was over sold and they moved you to PE to free up space. This happened to me at LHR & I only found out when I refreshed the app at the gate and then the agent said I’d been upgraded. Due to many delays at LHR that day is was likely some passengers missed their earlier flight and were rebooked on mine and it was easy to move me as a solo traveller and with status to accommodate them.
It’s always fun to land at DFW, the flight crew announces “Welcome to Dallas, the local time is…” and then you hear the grumbling from “Fort Worth” residents sitting around you 🙂 #norespect
It might be even better than being on a plane that lands at MCI and the flight crew welcomes you to Kansas.
In my opinion, The OneWorld Alliance is just a marketing tool to have AA customers feel that the status a loyal traveler has at AA will be honored at other partner airlines. I have an Executive Platinum status with AA and Japan Airlines stated that status upgrades are never honored from other partner airlines with the OneWorld Alliance program. I have experienced this same answer with Cathay Pacific. I agree with the reviews, upgrades are very rare. Still trying to convince myself why chase the AA status. Loyal customer for many years but 2023-2024 may be my last. Safe travels