Joseph.doakes

A few weeks ago i was checking on the status of an upgrade from DFW-NRT. At the time, Biz was full up and my upgrade was going nowhere. I had 31B, so i was ok with it. The wonderful AA helpline person for international travel asked me if she could do anything else for me. I asked her to see if I could upgrade my flight before the international trip which was DFW-PIT. I didn't think that i could because it was an award ticket, but i figured i'd check anyway. She did some clicking and said that i was all set. I told her she could pull the 3 500-mile coupons and get that all squared away. She laughed. Day of the trip comes (DFW-PIT still) and my upgrade was still valid, sat 5B and had a great flight. A week after i get home, i check my AA account and see that NO 500-mile coupons have been deducted AND i got credit for the DFW-PIT leg even though it was an award ticket.
I hope no one got in trouble over this, but it looks like i lucked out and got a freebie. how the heck did it happen?
just curious.
thanks
JD

wonderbret

No idea here. Is your account balance now lower in RDM's?

Joseph.doakes

Nope. Not at all.
Date withheld AMERICAN AIRLINES XXXX DFW PIT
No miles for the return leg...which is what i expected anyway.

skylady

Now that you posted your good luck here, someone will find out

ORDinaryPax

Agreed. You may want to redact your seat number, flight number, and any other incriminating details.

I was once upgraded on an award to F on a LAX-ORD redeye on my way back from HNL. This was thanks to my friend/travel companion's EXP status, and was a clear violation of the award rules. Whatever that gate AAgent did, it was clearly not orthodox. I ended up getting full mileage credit for LAX-ORD, including the .5 RDM bonus for sitting in F. (I repeat, this was an award ticket.)

billgrates3

Joseph...
Did you finally get upgraded on the NRT-DFW segment? (it's a bit ambiguous from your post) If you did, you were entitled to the DFW-PIT segment anyway.

JimAtl

In that scenario he would not have got miles. It sounds like the helpful AA rep rebooked him in Y/B so he ended up with miles and a complimentary upgrade.

billgrates3

Yes, i understand that, but the real issue is getting the domestic segment confirmed before the int'l one has cleared. The Aangel apparently did it in the sweetest way possible (lucky guy, the OP!), but many of us have had that issue also.

In my case, on an outbound segment AA24 SFO-JFK (usually hard to score an upgrade) when the TATL eVIP had not yet cleared, i bought the upgrade with miles, then on day of departure when TATL cleared, called and got the EXP desk to put the miles back into my account... this was before they started the $50 copay. The situation is worse on inbound segments, like the OPs, as you may get a TATL or TPAC segment cleared just before departure and have no time to score the domestic connecting segment(s). Waitlisting has a high risk of not clearing, even with the higher priority of eVIP-T status.

Fornebufox

I got mileage credit for several award/voucher tickets flown on the late lamented Pan Am. It wasn't a huge surprise when they went out of business.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

About five years back as a PLT I needed to change my flight back to JFK as a hurricane was approaching MIA. So call the PLT line (which we know is not really a real line) and the TA is most helpful in changing my flight. She even tells me she has put me into seat 2A on a 757 even though I don't have enough stickers (one of the good seats as she said).

Of course, when I try to kiosk check in it directs me to an agent. The check in agent says why are you in F. I say because the TA put me there. The rather huffy check in agent informs me that he is putting me back in Y and that the TA should not have done this (and while yes he did the right thing he was beyond rude about it.)

But no worries. The Y section had about six paxs and the FAs (glad to be getting out of MIA before the storm hit) supplied all paxs with free booze and also complimentary BOB for Y paxs.

000123UA

So, I'm confused because it sounds like you were trying to (and did) upgrade an award ticket. I don't understand how any of that would have ever even been a possible discussion.

Maybe I'm confusing things here, but I didn't think AA allowed you to waitlist for another cabin on an award, nor did I think you could use miles or VIPs on award tickets.

I know on UA I can ticket a business award reservation even if some legs are only available in coach and UA will waitlist me for the biz cabin.

To clarify, I get that an agent worked some voodoo to convert his booking class on the domestic leg to an upgradable one, so I'm not asking "technically" how it was done, just whether I'm misunderstanding how that subject might have ever even come up.

Joseph.doakes

So, there are 2 separate flights in question.
1. DFW-PIT early in the month
2. DFW-NRT later in the month, after the PIT flight but not part of that flight.

The call was to inquire about upgrade on the NRT flight. The upgrades did clear. co-pay and miles, but worth it. 8-)
The domestic flight was an award ticket and not likely eligible for upgrading.

all other important info has been redacted or changed (I think) to protect the innocent miles that i earned.

HNL

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

It's clearly because the cute OP was traveling on his birthday enroute to his honeymoon.

000123UA

I get it now.

ILuvParis

You were nice. She was nice. Sometimes that's all it takes.