Mixed cabin / class award issues, questions, discussion
 

Hey all,

I've been searching for info on the policy for gate upgrades on a mixed cabin award. Currently I have YYZ - LAX in economy with the rest of my itinerary to Tahiti in business. I'm hopeful that business space will open prior to (November departure), but if it doesn't, is there any policy re: upgrading at the gate for mixed cabin itineraries similar to how AC allows it with AP awards?

Thanks in advance!
Tyler

As far as I have experienced, AA's policy is that one sits in his ticketed cabin. If you want a higher cabin of service, watch obsessively for the award inventory to become available.

It used to be that pmUA would (officially or unofficially) treat passengers who are in the OP's situation (e.g., flying on a F ticket but booked in Y due to lack of seats in F) as displaced F passengers with priority for any available F seats at boarding time. This was never considered an "upgrade," rather just giving the passengers the first crack at the seats that they paid for.

Do you know whether AA has a similar (official or unofficial) policy?

I figured that was the case, but hoping they treat me like a displaced F passenger if no space opens like the other poster mentioned.

Does anyone have experience with that segment? Looks like the YYZ-LAX is wide open business availability for revenue...is there a point at which they tend to start releasing as award space?

One might get an ExpertFlyer subscription and set an alert.

It sounds like when booking, you took a voluntary downgrade for YYZ-LAX? If so, then make sure you are designated as such on the PALL List specifically, you want to be noted as "voluntary downgrade desires to travel in ticketed cabin"

Of course I have done that...newbie, but not that newbie!

My question is regarding if they DON'T release as award, but there is space in the cabin at the gate.

Mixed cabin / class award issues, questions, discussion
 

Hi,

I wanted to book a mixed cabin flight with the first leg on Business and the second leg in First class on Etihad. Is this possible to do if I called AAdvantage to book the award? And would it cost me the first class saver price despite one leg being on business?

Thanks

If the routing qualigfies as a single award redemption you can a voluntary downgrade into available business award inventory on one leg and enjoy F on the other for a single F redemption. Forget about an award discount because F isn't available. If the routing would be two awards, awards, anyway, do one J and one F.

Ah ok - do I ask for the voluntary downgrade despite there not being First availability for the first segment?

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

You ask for the voluntary downgrade because of -- not despite -- the lack of F availability on one segment. (If there were F availability on that segment, why on earth would you choose to sit in J?)

If, on the other hand, the flight in question simply does not have an F cabin, then it's not really a voluntary downgrade; it's simply an F award where one of the segments only has J and Y cabins.

In any event, if you fly even one segment in a three-class F cabin, the entire award should price as F, regardless of where you sit on the remaining flight(s).

Thanks for the help :D

Thanks for this explanation, was looking JFK-HKG with stop in NRT. There is F space on JAL and (for now) only bus. space on CX (NRT-HKG). Just wanted to get all the facts straight before I call AAdvantage

When you book a three class F saver award, you are entitled to sit in any class of service with saver space on any segment. However, some agents aren't as up to speed with the process of downgrading individual segments. I can't even count how many times I want to do something like say BOS-JFK-LAX saver with JFK-LAX in F and BOS-JFK in Y and the agents keep trying to tell me it is impossible or try to price it as two separate awards. They always act like BOS-JFK in Y is the end of the world when in reality, it's a 40 minute up and down flight that I really don't give a rip where I sit.

I'm trying to book a saver award in F AUH-JFK-YVR. First leg is on Etihad, Second on Cathay Pacific. The current cost for this award is 90K miles.
However, there is no availability on the AUH-JFK segment in F so I said I want to voluntarily downgrade to Business Class on the segment. There is availability on the JFK-YVR segment in F.
I tried 2 AA agents (in Australia) and they say both that this itinerary requires 2 separate awards, for a total of 100K miles, because of the mixed classes.
If F space becomes available on first leg, I could change and the award would be recomputed. Of course, my hope is that space will become available but I don't want the award to be recalculated after March 22 (or whatever the exact date is) because of the much higher cost.
What do I do to convince AA to book this as ONE F award for 90K???

jrseattle

If EY doesn't have a published fare from AUH to YVR, then the reservation system will price the itinerary as 2 separate awards, irrespective of the mixed classes of service. As an experiment, check if an all Business award from AUH to YVR prices at 67.5k. If it still breaks at JFK, you have your answer or at the very least, you know that the AA agent doesn't!

Mixed Cabin Award -- Quick Question
 

I am trying to book a ticket pre-devaluation and found the following availability:

JL NRT-LAX in Y
AA LAX-JFK in F Saver (priced at 32.5k standalone on the website).

Because of the one segment in F, shouldn't this award price out at 62.5k one way? (Same price as NRT-JFK in F on JL.) The AA agent quoted me a price of 50k and after repeated questioning, I hung up as I didn't want to ticket an award that wasn't at 62.5k.

Any one know why this was coming out at 50k? Was the agent just wrong?

Thanks!

Free checked bag on mixed cabin itinerary?
 

Hi,

my wife is flying on an award ticket DFW-MIA-MBJ where the first leg is in Y and the second in J. Can she check a bag for free?

thanks!

Yes. Business class baggage rules would apply for both legs.

However, as of this week, if the return is all in Y, the J allowance will no longer be extended to the entire trip.

If you get the chance, would you please check your wife's emailed itinerary confirmation and let us know what (if anything) it says about the charges for checked bags?

Misleading Award Travel (mixed class award issue)
 

When I try to book first class awards I am appalled that on a 4 segment itinerary almost always 3 out of 4 segments are in coach and only 1 is in first class. It seems to me using 30k miles for a one way first class ticket and only getting 1 segment out of 4 in first call is a rip off.
Does anyone else agree?

That depends, what is your itinerary?

Yes, I find it annoying too. And, they don't make it easy to find itineraries where there is inventory on all legs. I went through that exercise last month booking an AAnytime Business. Fortunately, my EF subscription saved the day and I found an itinerary that worked.

That's really interesting. I just tried to mock up a couple itineraries for Christmas to Montreal and noticed this exact thing. Is this new? I'd never seen some indicated as "business" and then not all legs (unless single class plane) were in that respective class.

I don't know if it's new but it has definitely got worse. If you try to search for a J award from LAX, SFO or DFW to SYD, the booking system will now offer you a Business award which is an AA flight in First to one of the other QF gateways and a Y seat on QF, instead of reporting no J awards.

Misleading Award Travel
 

My itinerary is
YLW - RSW
This is a multi segment route
YLW-SEA - always in Coach as it is a prop plane
SEA - RSW has numerous options - 2 segments or 3 segments but only 1 of 2 or 1 of 3 is in first class. The final segment to RSW is always in Coach
I used to be able to go from SEA to RSW in 2 segments both in First. Now it's not available.
What a rip off!

Travel is in late Oct/17 early Nov/17

Unfortunately I think the best advice here is to use another service to search. The AA search by month functionality is great, but if it isn't working I suggest searching via the BA website for a free option, or expertflyer.com if you feel like paying some cash for more functionality. There are other services out there also, like Awardnexus, though I'm not as familiar with their offerings.

For what it's worth, I very quickly found availability via SEA and DFW, and SEA and CLT, for October 26th using Expertflyer, but nothing else around that date. Jump on it!

Interesting. I often see itineraries where segments are in a different cabin because the requested cabin simply doesn't exist on the aircraft, but this is a whole different animal. I looked at YLW-RSW for this month, and 12/18 & 12/19 come up on the calendar as "30K" Business Saaver, but all of the final CLT-RSW and PHL-RSW segments are in coach even though they're on A320s. I don't think it used to be this way, and it certainly cuts into the utility of the calendar.

I find BA to be cumbersome (have to scroll through the calendar and wait for each day to load as you click on it) and I don't have EF. What I've found helpful if I want to be sure to be in J/F on a certain leg is to just check that leg using the AA site. So, if you are trying to go to Madrid, check DFW-MAD individually, and then once you've found availability then check from your home city.

I noticed the same problem yesterday when searching for SFO-AKL awards. AA.com showed saaver availability for almost every day in Feb. and Mar. 2017.
But on closer (& tedious!) examination, there were ZERO actual biz or first awards available.

AA.com was perfectly happy to sell me a one-way A ticket for 110K miles or U for 80K where only the first 1 hour flight SFO-LAX was in F ... all the other flights via SYD, MEL or BNE were in economy. Ditto for the return trip.

One could spend many hours looking thru every date to find which days had real premium availability, but I gave up after one hour and not finding any.

Frankly, I think this is fraudulent marketing by AA!


p.s. EF saves some time, but the result is the same, ZERO actual premium availability. But at least EF doesn't deliberately lie & cheat like aa.com does.

Or.... search LAX-AKL and grab it if you can get it in F or J. Then call AA and ask to add the SFO-LAX segment to the itinerary.

same for AS, UA & DL. disgusting.

UA search results clearly indicate "mixed cabin" for awards that have some flight legs in coach.

Misleading Award Travel
 

This thread has shifted my concern a bit.
My main issue is that AA Awards take the full amount of miles for Business/First Saver travel but only provide the service on 25% to 33% of the actual segments.
This is very misleading and one has to scroll through all the flight options to find out which segment is actual in Business/First class
Not transparent at all

I noticed that a few months ago, but recently it has been a plague :mad:
Every itinerary I've been searching gave me only this kind of results.
Mostly one lame BA segment + a couple of economy AA flights.
Sure, thanks AA... By far the worst program today, worse than Delta,
can you imagine?

I was searching international awards and AA had a First AAnytime award that was GIG-MIA business and first in the 777-300 MIA-LAX.

It's a problem cited in the AS forum, to be sure. Delta? I don't recall a pattern of seeing a long-haul in coach and short segment in F or partner business.

There are cases where such behaviour of mixed classes could be of benefit - rather than showing no availabilty where , for example, SFO-LAX was unavailable in buisness whilst LAX-AKL was available , it can now show a mixed offering of economy followed by business

It would seem to be a fairly complex change to start determining which flight mappings should be offered and which shoudl not

If there was an option of direct flights only , that would seem to be the best if AA could offer it