benaccetto

Just wanted to share my experience. I am an AA Platinum Select card holder with Elite Gold status. Booked my Blue Basic fare for my wife & I a couple of months ago, LAX-EWR on JetBlue red-eye flight. When I made my reservation, after entering my AA FF number, I looked to reserve seats but was only given a $$ upgrade option. This past weekend, I called in to JetBlue and was told that AA Platinum Elite status had no benefits for seating or baggage for Blue Basic (ie. Extra charges for checked or overhead baggage, no seats until 24 hours before flight.)

Last night, I checked in exactly 24 hours ahead. The reservation still said no bags, but when I added one for each of us and proceeded to the next page, there was no charge for the bags. Continuing on, I went to reserve seats and was offered up EMS seats. Took those seats and completed the check in. Also my reservation had previously been tagged for the last boarding group but after my check in, it said that I was boarding with the AAElite group.

So it appears that AA Elite benefits are not able to be applied until check in but until then, there is no way to get free bags or seats. I am pretty sure that I got the baggage option first so that probably did not rely on the EMS option, making the only issue being you cannot claim benefits until the 24 hour check-in period. Of course, that might mean that if there is a full flight of JetBlue Mosaic passengers, it might be difficult to get the EMS upgrade, but you should be able to at least be able to check luggage free of charge. I am also expecting that since I was able to get an EMS upgrade, I could also use the carry-on overhead option but with a non-stop, we are fine with checking our bags.

Hopefully my experience is mirrored by other AA Elites. It still seems like reciprocity is not very well documented but at least it does appear as though there is some benefit for AA Elites.