Originally Posted by
samosa
No, what he means is it is better to book on the AA website, rather than AS website, for AA flights because the upgrade process is smoother. It is not intuitive, but just how things are right now. It may change.
Technically, upgrades on AA for AS Elites must be marketed & operated by AA. If you book on AA you will earn EQM as a percentage of miles flown depending on fare class purchased as outlined in the AA charts in Mileage Plan. If you purchase an AS codeshare, you earn 100% EQM on all economy fare classes sold by AS. Earnings on AS codeshares follow the AS charts in Mileage Plan.
It is a tradeoff. Earn 100% EQM on an AS codeshare and hope you can be added and upgraded day of at the airport of EARN 25%‐75% EQM on an AA prime and automatically have an upgrade requested that can clear from 72 hour before departure.
EDIT:
If you want to earn 100% EQM on an AA Prime flight, you will need to purchase a higher fare class than V. Those fares will be pretty expensive and in some cases could be higher than discount J.
For flights less than 500 miles, earning will be the same on either AA or AS. There are some standalone codeshare flights sold by AS (SAN-MIA) and some will be a mix (MIA-DFW(AA)-SEA-PHX(AS) like the itinerary I booked. I am happier earning 3882 EQM with a lower likelihood of an upgrade on MIA-DFW than purchasing AA MIA-PHX direct or MIA-LAX-PHX and earning 500-1479 EQM or 1006-2257 EQM respectively with an upgrade request.
James