Originally Posted by
Brett Byers
Thank you for the suggestion platbrownguy.
Please don't take my ignorance on what may seem obvious to you personally. I've received varying opinions from everyone who is trying to be helpful on this forum and some if it I find confusing (and conflicting).
For example- while I haven't traveled to Europe in over 10 years, I am actually going there next month (a different trip from what I have bee discussing in this thread). For that trip I booked American (not BA) and asked about the upgrade option. I was told on the phone it would be 25k miles and $350 if I remember correctly which his exactly what you confirmed. But I was also told I would find out if I get the upgrade within 24hrs of the flight. You and others have said this isn't the case but that is what happened to me. I made the upgrade request weeks go and haven't heard anything, which has me really wondering how I can book a ticket and get the upgrade on one call when I am still waiting to hear back on my flight next month. So while what you and others say makes sense, my personal experience with this way of getting the upgrade hasn't worked for me. I wish there was someone at AA I could just sit down with and talk through all this. I see the people at the Chicago Admirals club just about every week and they are great, but they are busy helping people with flights and wouldn't have the time or this.
Unfortunately in this case I think I screwed myself and may have to settle with BA's product, as based on my negative upgrade experience I explained above I thought buying a business or first seat with miles was the best option and earlier tonight purchased $990 in miles to help cover it. Now we know how the airlines are making so much cash...off people like me who don't know what they are doing
as others here have said, the agent who told you the 24 hours thing was incorrect. I have flown 800 segments on AA in the last five years (and not proud of it in real life, I assure you). but I and others here know how to burn our miles (though we may differ on the relative merits of each airline's products).
for future reference, if there is "C" availability, you can confirm a miles+copay upgrade at the time of booking. the idea is that 99.9% of the time, there is
no C availability. so you have to waitlist your upgrade. and, often, if there are still seats available in business class, they will become available (i.e. there will be C availability) around 24 hours before departure (26-28 hours, in my experience). Sometimes there will be seats released a few days and a few weeks before as well, but a little more than 24 hours is a common time to clear the waitlist. So it makes sense that your experience was an example of that. But tools like expertflyer.com allow you to search for
current C availability, and when it's there, you can simply call AA, say "hi I'd like to book LHR-ORD on July 4, returning July 11, and I'd like to use miles+copay to upgrade the outbound to business please" and they'll take care of the rest.