azlkk64

Booked my next US Air flights on an AA ticket and am told that I can't use my AA EP system-wide upgrades on "Codeshare flights" per policy. Not impressed. I can understand if it was a partner airline but not in this case. Guess it's finally time to look for a new airline.

sosfo

It's not the ticket stock, it's the marketing carrier. You can buy a US flight number, operated by US, from AA.com and you'd be fine. This has been discussed extensively here, and it's pretty clear on AA's website. It will be this way just until the reservations systems merge. I'm sorry that happened to you. A little homework goes a long way, though. Is it an itinerary that is maybe worth cancelling the ticket and rebooking?

azlkk64

Corporate travel agent handles the details, it's all transparent to me normally. The flights are PHX to TLV, the longest that US Air flies so upgrades matter.

What I fail to understand is how the policy can't be waived in a case like this. I don't expect upgrades on OneWorld airlines but flights with AA numbers on an AA ticket shouldn't be an issue.

JDiver

For some time, the airlines (still operating as if separate carriers with separate policies until October) have warned us to not buy codeshares if we wished to upgrade. It has certainly been a great topic of discussion here.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...d-threads.html

In part, the wiki states, from an announcement made some months ago:

I'm pretty sure the rules won't be waived, but you can see if there's upgrade availability once you check in. Sorry you slipped through the cracks and your travel agent failed you as well.

We will likely merge your query into that thread. /Moderator

Segments

Our corporate travel has been pretty good about monitoring codeshares during the integration. And of course, I review my itineraries closely to insure a codeshare or mixed metal doesn't slip through unnoticed, especially when an upgrade is important to me. Using the travel agent we can cancel the ticket and rebook with 24 hours if needed to re-issue as a prime flight or change connection time if mixed metal has me changing terminals.

If you haven't kept up with the airline warnings about upgrades on codeshares why is that "time for a new airline"? Since the airlines (plural) are still on separate reservation systems this is really no different than expecting an upgrade on any other OW codeshare flight.

PHL

Can you ask the corporate agent to rebook the ticket with US flight numbers? Have you checked to see if there is even SWU-eligible upgrade space available?

We'd all like them to waive policy when it suits our needs, but this limitation has been very clearly published. It's not very passenger friendly, but they apparently opted to put more IT resources into the merging of systems than creating some band-aid upgrade processes that will only be active for 6-8 months.

Exec_Plat

I use a personal travel agent for all my travel (our corp agent sucks) and love the ability to have a 24 hr 'safety net'....

I was just booking 4 separate trips, two international trips, plus one all europe, last week. A flight slipped by, he had me on AA890...but that is a US operated flight. I caught it on Saturday, emailed him. He fixed it Monday AM, reticked onto US890. Same price, just a new ticket number. On AA.com Id have been hosed.

@azl- In terms of "waiving" the rule- it isnt that simple. If someone wanted to waive it they just cant. They can put you into an F seat (and lose their job), but they can't 'tick' off a box and remove a rule and cause the system to process your record differently.

Ive been burned by this before- it is super annoying. Once burnt, twice learnt.