A321T

Did my first upfare and it was fairly seamless. I called in, had to wait a bit as she calculated the new fare applying a corporate discount, but no additional change fee, we picked seats instantly, and the new combined fare showed up in an hour or two on the email receipt and aa.com.

sambagrrl07

DH and I will be on a one way ticket, EIS-SJU-MIA-EWR, with a just legal 45 minute connecting time in MIA. AA ticket stock, with the first leg on a Silver Airways/AA code share. I asked today about upfaring the SJU-MIA leg (or all of it) to get us closer to the front of the plane for the short connection, but the AAgent, who seemed quite competent, said she couldn�t sell me business class. She checked with her �rate desk,� including the �rate desk supervisor,� and was told that even though there�s a published business fare, there�s no way she can sell it to me �because there�s no fare to match it� and �we can�t sell you that ticket in this particular market.� Can someone explain what this means? Is this a HUCA situation?

JJeffrey

I suspect the fact that you were trying to just upfare the SJU-MIA segment confused things, just a guess. Typically airfares don't work like that. It's not possible to just upfare to business on one segment without splitting up the itinerary into 3 separate tickets and most likely costing way more, etc.

Nevertheless, if you search aa.com or Google Flights, can you buy a business class ticket on your flight date for the exact routing you're on? If yes, then definitely HUCA, the difference between what you paid and what the business class fare is currently is what you'll need to pay.

sambagrrl07

She said she tried to price it both with an individual segment and for the itinerary as a whole, but I'll follow your suggestion, thanks!

enpremiere

Even if a premium cabin was sold out on one of the segments, that shouldn't prevent you a sellup on the journey as whole (you wouldn't get the sold out one of course).

One scenario where it can get dicey is dealing with an expensive fare class such as J on one or more segments and re-pricing can make it astronomically expensive.

sambagrrl07

Interesting - I looked two hours ago and there were indeed no business tickets matching that itinerary on Google that got us home on the same day. But now there appears to be availability. I may call again to see if it works now.

enpremiere

Further upthread there is also a confirmation that a change in connection points would still be permitted without a penalty on a sellup or up fare so you may not need to stick with the same routing (contrary to what you would be restricted to with a same day confirmed flight change).

sambagrrl07

That�s good to know - I�d looked at CLT but the flights were already pretty full in J so decided to stick to MIA.

sambagrrl07

It looks like a sell up will be too expensive to be worth it, but I�ll be PPro at that point so will rely on SDFC if the connection looks iffy.

MikeShores

To update:

I had a flight booked 1/23/20 BOS-DFW-AUS at 8:17 am. In posting in the lounge access thread and reviewing my itinerary, I realized that I had booked Thursday instead of the desired Friday. (outside of 24 hours when I noticed) I knew about upfaring and being able to change flight times and connection cities when upfaring, so I convinced my boss that $398 for first class was better than $294 economy because I could get the $200 change fee waived (net change $198). That's not really how it went down though. My buddy, who is EXP (until Feb anyway)was applying an SWU to my outbound trip and given the 2+ hour wait for a callback, the EXP agent agreed to help with the upfare as well. She was familiar with the waiver and put in my requested change from BOS-DFW-AUS to BOS-CLT-AUS and said the difference would be $398. I mentioned the waiver and she said she had applied it, but that it was still indicating to collect the change fee. She offered to send it to the rate desk and after a 10-minute hold, she returned and explained that while you used to be able to make changes to flight, times, connections, and co-terminals when upfaring (provided travel was on the same day) that had been changed in November and the waiver is now only applicable on the same itinerary. I pushed for a little more clarity and said "same routing?" and she said no, the same flights already booked, times, connections, etc. That flies in the face of the information here (and my past experiences).

Ultimately, my request was honored, as a 1 time exception...but only because she had already released my previous seats/fare and was unable to recapture them. Given the detailed conversation we had, and the engagement she provided, I am relatively certain that this information is correct...AA closed the loophole in November. I jokingly (but seriously) said I would inform everyone.

Really disappointing that AA has limited this "benefit" but I guess it's just another "enhancement" we were unaware of.

enpremiere

JonNYC - Would love to know if AA connection point changes on upfare/upsell no longer waives change fee.

Reetmafreen

Well, flights have been taken, BA First Class check in at T3 was underwhelming. BA Galleries First lounge is no Concorde Room (I got to try the CX F lounge and the QF lounge) and I did manage to luck out and get a Mid-J 747 with the updated IFE.

My current bugbear is that I had/still having a devil of a time getting the correct EQD/RDM amount credited to my AAdvantage account. For both flights, the EQD was significantly less than I was expecting and this meant that based on the outbound that was taken at the end of the year, I ended up at less than $9K EQD on the year and therefore did not requalify for PPRO. I got that fixed and ended up qualifying after all. The return flight was also short credited and I submitted a claim especially as my activity showed my original I Class, rather than the up fared A class. They did change that to A and credited more EQD, but when I add up the EQD from both flights, it only comes to what I would have expected from my original business class only fare. They still haven’t credited the $353 up fare portion of the first class return.

Time me to call the AAdvantage desk I guess.

asnovici

Can one apply a value of a cancelled but unused ticket to an existing international ticket to upfare to Business? Example is cancelled DFW CDG DFW ticket with $1000 value and existing Ticketed DFW MAD DFW in coach. Can we apply the former to the latter to reissue in Business? I’m aware vouchers can not be applied to the reissue but want to be sure about this scenario as it’s applying value of a cancelled ticked instead of voucher. Caveat is the existing DFW MAD DFW was also purchased with funds from another cancelled ticket.

USFlyerUS

This would in effect be exchanging two tickets for one and paying an A/C, if needed. I believe Sabre allows up to four tickets to be exchanged for one. However, I don't know if AA has locked that down in its agent interface. Years ago, when US was still on Sabre, I routinely applied multiple unused tickets for one new ticket. I'm not sure if AA allows that, though.

asnovici

Twitter said up to two tickets are possible to apply for one higher class ticket. EXP agent said only one for one. Wish the former is true but won’t test it till July