Originally Posted by
edkwan88
Hey all,
Looking for some advice. I like to maximize the points I get for reward travel in business class, this is important to me as I'm the only one in my family that travels, earns points, CC, etc yet I have my parents and in-laws to consider. Wife doesn't travel for work. We're of Asian descent so all of our trips home (US to East Asia) are very long, especially with aging parents so I like to treat them when I can.
Typically in everyone's experience, how good is "C" class availability on AA? I believe that's the AA business class upgrade fare code for instant upgrade with SWA. I plan to do quite a bit of corporate travel this year. I can either get AA EXP or AS Gold 75k, but not both (lots of common partners, I do mostly international travel on partners). With AS, I get a lot more points per flight, typically 350% or more of the flight distance (J fares and Gold 75k 125% bonus). For AA, it seems I'll only get 11x per dollar on AA or around 250% of the flight distance (if partner airline, and factoring in 120% EXP bonus). What it comes down to is the AA SWA for me, I can get 4 SWA (probably hit 150k miles and get another 2), which to me is 2 round trip tickets for when one set of parents wants to return home. I'm trying to consider the odds of getting 2 SWAs to clear when I use them on guests with absolutely no status. With AS, I just get more points so I can just book the seats outright, but obviously I'm not getting 4-6 SWA equivalent.
So what's everyone's advice on which FF program to use when I'm trying to maximize the number of business class tickets I can potentially get? Note: I'm based out of PHX, an AA hub. Have very limited flights on AS (Only SEA, SFO, PDX)
Is there a better thread for this question?
This is a tough one to answer . As a data point I attempted to use SWU on a round trip from DFW to Tokyo direct in March of 2019. For the outbound the flight was fairly full in business early on and no upgrade was given. On the return the flight looked fairly open in business up until about the last week and it started filling up. Again no upgrade. I am an entry level EXP so basically barely make the minimum EQD/EQM so I would be on the bottom of the SWU list for EXP. From what I have heard Asia is a bit more difficult for SWU in general. However, Premium Economy for longer flights is a great product so I buy seats in that cabin and cross my fingers.