With first class seats American doesn’t expect to sell available to anyone starting at just $40 before they’re willing to honor a complimentary upgrade for Executive Platinums, getting an upgrade is much less common than it used to be. A decade ago I pretty much always cleared my upgrades. Now it’s rare. Even deadheading pilots now get upgraded ahead of ConciergeKey customers at the airport.
A decade ago premium cabin awards were easy to come by. After US Airways took over, that changed. Confirmed international upgrades at booking became rare, too. And then they nearly eliminated confirmed upgrade space for domestic flights, too. (They’ve even gotten rid of extra coach award space for Executive Platinum members.)
Upgrades – both complimentary, and redeemed using systemwides – were the primary benefit of Executive Platinum status. Now I don’t ever bank on getting upgraded. Most of the time I’m not! If a premium cabin matters on a given trip, I secure it at booking. Otherwise I resign myself to coach.
American is hardly alone in this. In fact, Delta was far ahead in monetizing their first class cabin, declaring nearly a decade ago that they hoped to make first class upgrades disappear. They redefined upgrades as being to Comfort+ (extra legroom coach), even running an upgrade process for it rather than just letting elites book these seats. And United pioneered ‘tens of dollars’ upgrade upsells.
However, there’s one Executive Platinum benefit I still value more than any other. And it’s one that I find many Executive Platinum members aren’t aware they have: adding extra flights to an itinerary without reissuing the ticket.
- When I face a flight delay and possible misconnection, I immediately call (or head to the Admirals Club) and get an agent to put a ‘backup’ itinerary in my reservation.
- I want the chance to still make my original flight! But other itinerary options may be scarce, and I want to lock something in.
- So they add these segments that I may use to my itinerary, but don’t drop my current itinerary, and they don’t reissue the ticket (yet).
As an Executive Platinum, agents are allowed to do this for me. And the airline’s automated system for cancelling out duplicative space doesn’t run to stop this for an Executive Platinum, either.
This past week I was sitting at Washington’s National airport, waiting on a delayed flight to Charlotte. I was booked in first class, and another passenger booked in first headed to the same destination was trying to figure out his options. We didn’t have any information on the cause of the mechanical delay yet, or how long it would be.
- He did not know he could get a backup itinerary set up.
- I had backed myself up through Miami (and when different space opened up later, rebooked myself through Dallas)
- Seats were scarce. I was finding one seat at a time, and one coach seat was showing up through Philadelphia.
- I found him a seat through Chicago – it was coach to Chicago and then first for his longer segment.
American Airlines National Airport Gate C29
I showed him the flights that were available, and told him to ring American back and ask them to put the backup segments in his itinerary so he’d have the option – but not to take him off of his current flights. It was like a lightning bolt hit him when that actually worked. No one had ever offered it to him before, but there was no pushback at all when he asked.
I’ve been an Executive Platinum (or Concierge Key) with American Airlines every year since 2012. However I do that without actually trying all that hard, based on flying I’d do anyway and now accumulating points where AAdvantage is the best available option anyway.
I actually believe that chasing top tier status is a mistake and that the sweet spot is mid-tier status that comes with extra legroom seats at booking. American doesn’t have enough of those, and even booking in advance it can be tough to get an extra legroom aisle. By not worrying about status, your incremental investment for it can be spent on other things.
Arguably at American, if you’re not concerned about where you are on the upgrade list when your upgrade doesn’t clear, Platinum Pro status is the sweet spot since it’s oneworld emerald as well. You can get into Qantas, Cathay Pacific, and other first class lounges when you travel internationally.
Qantas First Class Lounge, Sydney
Plus, Platinum Pros can still be added to standby lists by a gate agent, up to 15 minutes before departure while for Platinums and below must add themselves via app or website, 45 minutes before a flight, but that doesn’t always work the way it is supposed to.
My advice is to take higher status if you can get there but it isn’t something to shoot for, because airlines began taking short-term revenue over long-term long before they started upgrading pilots ahead of passengers.
However, the one thing I value most from Executive Platinum is – I suppose – not something that many flyers factor when making their decision. As often as I’ve had challenges getting where I’m going with American, the ability to put backup flights in a reservation during irregular operations has made a huge difference getting me to my destination close to as-planned.
I must be missing something because I still don’t understand how this works. So with a backup flight, you essentially have two ticketed flights you can board from your current destination and you just go on the one you want?
Agree 100% with this!! In my short couple years of being an EXP with AA, the upgrades while definitely nice I think fall second fiddle to their ability to take care of me during irrops. The last time I was impacted fairly severely and the impact was going to roll into a scheduled trip the next day they were able to get my wife to original destination and get me to the next destination with only about 5 minutes of keystroking from an AC Angel who advised us to go get a drink and then came by 10 minutes later with a perfect set of boarding passes.
@Gary: If you mzake your original flights do you affirmatively cancel the backups?
For us AA flyers that are not Ex Plat, there is an easier backup plan option. Just make a backup flight reservation on SW! When you board your AA flight cancel your SW reservation and get flight credit that never expires or a full cash refund depending on the type of SW reservation you made. Just make sure you cancel the SW reservation before getting to close to its flight departure time. I do not recall how many minutes that is, but its not many. Hopefully in future SW won’t be changing its rules and impacting the easy ability to do this nice backup option for any reservation made with a competing airline where SW flys to your final destination.
@L3 – I generally do to remove the inventory faster and make things easier on fellow flyers, but AA will cancel them out and accommodate others if needed
AA convinced me to walk away from that airline as an Ex-Plat. AA was 98% of my flight business, and that now goes elsewhere. I could only handle so much exceptionally poor customer service and “loyalty” bait-and-switch scams. The only airlines that I avoid more than AA is Spirit and Frontier. May be the best travel-related decision I ever made was walking away from their status. My flying sanity has been exponentially improved since. I’m sure AA doesn’t care, as they are more interested in trapping new travelers than actually reciprocating loyalty to their elite frequent flyers. It’s almost as if they enjoy customer turnover.
Living in the Northeast where snow happens, the ability to have Reservations place a backup flight is essential! I have used this numerous times both at US Airways (pre and post AW merger) as Chairman’s Preferred, and later at AA as EP.
On thing I noticed recently flying out of CLT during a mechanical delay is that though the Club could only find standby space, not 10 minutes later the AA app displayed a delay on my flight and offered me to confirm a seat in 1st on the very flight the Club could only grab standby. Though I was successful in getting the confirmed seat via the app, being on standby as well prevented me from getting a boarding pass via the app. This required the Club Agent to fix it which was a 10 minute process unto itself. I got the seat and got out before the delayed aircraft even arrived.
There was a period where Calling the EP line would not result in getting a backup flight. But now it’s kinda back to what it used to be.
As for the person that asked what to do about the later backup if you make your earlier original flight. You need to have the gate agent remove the back up or call Reservations and have them remove the backup before it departs. America West’s SHARES system had a mechanism that canceled the entire record locater if the passenger missed a flight. That mechanism has stayed even into this version of AA (because it’s actually American West “under the hood.”) If you have say four segmens in a record locater, and segment 2 is the one with issues and you get backed up on another flight. If that back becomes the new segment 3 and you don’t have it removed should you make your original segment 2, then your other two flights (now segments 4 & 5) get cancelled. There’s no method to do this in the app, you have to speak to a human and they have to do it from a terminal be it in the airport or calling Reservations.
But backup flights can save your trip and get you to work, vacation, home, or anywhere. Irregular ops happen. And I experience it a lot especially in the Northeast.
Agreed that chasing status on any airline is an exercise in futility
With AA, the only real value to me is the Emerald status that gets me into certain first class lounges and a “dedicated” reservations phone # – great on paper but hit and miss in the real world – especially when calls are routed to a call center in Lima Peru…
After being “rewarded” for my 10MM BIS mile with a form email with 4 x SWU’s (basically useless) AND a brand new luggage tag – i started taking my business elsewhere especially since it is so easy to retain EXP status with a good credit card spend
it’s sad to see how the EXPLAT and other airline’s programs have lost their luster in the past years…
I find that what staff at the Admirals Club is willing and maybe able to do is all over the map. Sometimes staff can perform near miracles and at other times you’d get no better response than if you asked the gate agent. But the EXP desk tends to be more dependable.
Case in point flying MIA/DFW/TUS last Saturday. Complimentary upgrade on the MIA/DFW flight (it’s a 77W) and paid upgrade for around $200 on the DFW/TUS portion. Landed at DFW and I notice that I’m now in a middle coach seat to TUS. A/C switched from an A321 to an A320 and even though paid upgrade I’m odd man out. Do a bit of research and determine there are open F seats if I’m flying to fly DFW/PHX/TUS. Go up to AC desk. Told there aren’t even any open aisle or window seats on the A320 and no they can’t reroute me. Called the EXP desk and within 2 minutes rerouted DFW/PHX/TUS all in F.
BTW, if there are upgrades out there for $40 I haven’t seen them. The cheapest I’ve seen lately is $59 and that’s for TUS/PHX, flight time of 20-30 minutes.
Totally agree w @NotGonnaDoIt regarding AA avoidance. I’m based in Dallas. My experience as UA 1K was superior to ExPlat. I went back to AA under duress mainly because of schedule changes that resulted in poor connections on UA. I may go back to UA anyway since my destinations are now different.
Agree that this is a great EXP “perk” (been EXP since 2005 and have used it several times). On a few occasions, I’ve even found, while looking at my itinerary in the app, that they proactively added back up segments without me asking for questionable connections. However, I’m not sure what prompts them to do that or not do it – maybe once they get done with working their CK queue for potential missed connections and delays they occasionally show some love to some EXPs?
I’ve also been told once by a phone agent, when I asked for a backup flight, that they are not supposed to do that anymore but they would make an exception based on my loyalty and status. So, maybe it’s not a published perk per se (never seen it listed under benefits anywhere) and something that is at their discretion for EXP and above.
I also agree the agents in the Admiral’s Clubs are extremely helpful in these situations especially since they can often make a call and find out what is actually happening with a flight at their location faster than phone agents in my experience. And the angels at the Admirals Club are much more willing to do something for you than a gate agent that has a 100 other people vying for their attention.
Hopefully, they keep this level of service for EXPs and at the Admirals Club since as mentioned complimentary and systemwide upgrades, which used to be the primary perk of status, have definitely lost their usefulness and value.
Qantas doesn’t operate any first class lounges, in Sydney or anywhere else.
Gary, I must be missing something here. AA has a great perk to back up your flights in case your planned flight disappears. Why don’t they just do a better job flying the flights they have? That perk could no way induce me to give up my UA 1K.
Exec plat due to Cc spend, get upgraded about 1/2 time out of Philly. Did just enjoy the first class BA lounge at Heathrow, nice wines!
Best things about having miles is the ability to book tickets with free cancellation if weather is bad at destination or civil unrest issues or if better/cheaper premium cabin seats become available. Usually have both. star alliance and oneworld tickets.
Good news Gary, you don’t have to fly AA to get this perk. As a lifetime GS on United they’ve been backing me up on alternate flights for over 15 years now. I believe they do this for 1Ks also.
I learned the hard way this past summer that AA had stopped protecting me on back-up flights when I’m being hammered by AA’s extended rolling delays for many hours on end. I had previously been used to getting protected onto the next flight or other back-up flights but then was told I have to cancel one or the other and can’t be confirmed on multiple flights even when AA is causing me a hassle.
In the last five years, I’ve had 1 — and only one — complimentary upgrade with AA as Platinum or higher elite status holder. It happened to be a c. 4+ hour flight but the domestic first class style seats on the plane were not great.
I’ve not had good upgrade rates on US airlines for at least the last 20 years.
@JOSH. Yes Quantasdoes operate first class lounges. Even in Los Angeles they have a completely separate first class lounge from the business class lounge. It’s night and day different.
As a long time AA EP, I’m surprised to hear that other EP’s don’t know about the “backup” flight. It’s one of the few good status perks left, along with the dedicated phone number to use to arrange it.
Whenever I have a cancellation or a delay of unknown duration (as happened at Baltimore two weeks ago), my first action on getting off the dormant plane is to call the EP line and get “protected” (or “backed up”) for the next available flight to my destination. In the case of my Baltimore problem, the next available flight wasn’t until the next day, but that was fine – at least I had a seat.
With EP perks such as upgrades becoming more and more scarce, these two remaining perks remind me why it’s still good to have status. But it’s sad that I’ve lowered my expectations of the AA loyalty program so much, and I do keep expecting to hear that these two perks have been taken away.
Not sure why that should kept you loyal to AA. I’m DL Diamond and they proactively offer. I don’t even need to ask. Even as a platinum they would do it. Also sounds like UA does it as well…
As someone approaching Executive Platinum for the first time, this is an excellent benefit. What is the lingo, or what specific words do I use when on the phone or at the AC so the agent understands what I’m trying to do? Is it “help me add a backup itinerary”?
I don’t have your experience with upgrades. Although I haven’t tracked the actual percentage, I would guess that I’m probably around 90% upgraded to first class as executive platinum, but that is probably due to the airports I fly from.
It Is quite rare for me not to be upgraded.
As to your other point, I have been aware of that perk and have used it several times, but it doesn’t happen enough that it’s a big perk in my opinion. To me, it is still about the upgrades. As long as I’m still getting them I will remain loyal to AA .
I’m also impressed with the low mileage requirements for many domestic flights. I book out a year in advance as soon as the calendar opens for trips that I anticipate for the next year knowing that I can cancel for free. I often get flights over 1000 miles for 7,500 AA Miles give or take a few (just booked one for 6,000 yesterday).
AA is miles ahead of the other loyalty programs in my opinion. I don’t understand the hate. I’m not saying you’re necessarily spreading the hate in this post, but I just hear it so often from many commenters (and bloggers).
Matthew,
Yeah, just tell them you wanna be backed up on another flight and keep your existing itinerary. I always research ahead of calling to see which flights are available so I can tell them the specific new flight I want to be booked on.
@Quantas Lounge, no. Qantas doesn’t have a single first class lounge in its network. What it does have are first lounges. There’s no “class” in the title. One Mile at a Time gets it right; View from the Wing (among others) doesn’t.