Originally Posted by
bse118
My understanding is that these in-app offers are just buy-ups to the lowest first class cabin fare - the difference in fare between the ticket you purchased and the current front cabin selling price. So essentially no different than someone going to AA.com and buying a F seat.
Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
This is definitely not the case on DL, so I doubt it is true on AA. I've flown with my son a few times on separate fares on DL, and we've always gotten the same offer price even though the fares were different (including when he was on an award ticket, and I was on a revenue one). DL seems to have fixed prices per segment for each fare bucket and my prices go up and down as fare bucket availability has changed. I've got a DTW-OAK trip coming up and I've see three different offers for the DTW-SLC leg which have changed whenever the fare bucket availability changes. It's been as high as $425.87 when only D bucket was open, and then $291.50 when there was I bucket open, and dropping to as low as $184 when Z bucket opened up (DL's lowest FC fare class). In many cases, the fare difference is cheaper than the upgrade prices offered online (although upfaring requires upgrading all segments on fare, while the online upgrades can be done segment-by-segment). Although as you get closer to flight and cheaper advance purchase FC fares are no longer available, the online offer can be cheaper than fare difference.