Originally Posted by
Brittany Caroline
New to travel hacking here so hopefully I'm posting in the right spot! Here's what I booked:
American Airlines *operated by British Airways* VCE--> LHR in Economy (K)
American Airlines LHR --> LAX in Premium Economy (P)
I booked through Chase CC portal and didn't catch that the first leg of the trip is Economy (upon further investigation there is only Economy and Business on the short Venice to London jaunt). I called Chase to upgrade, they said call BA, BA said to call American. Can I upgrade just that leg of the flight to business using either points and/or cash?
For all intents and purposes no. To upgrade partner flights with AA miles you need to be in the highest fare classes, which K (and P) are not, and even if you were there are no upgrades for flights solely within Europe.
Now technically speaking you could call Chase to change your booking to be VCE-LHR in business then LHR-LAX in PE, but the only way to accomplish that is to just pay the fare difference and break the fare into VCE-LHR + LHR-LAX which is going to be prohibitively expensive.
For a 2.5 hr intra Europe flight on BA I can assure you it's most definitely not worth the $$ or effort.