Unofficial: Complimentary CK/EXP Premium Economy Upgrades?
 

Finally some good news on the AA front...

HT: JonNYC and OMAAT (http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...my-upgrades-2/).

- Systemwide Upgrades (SWUs) will still be valid for upgrades to the business class cabin, even on aircraft with premium economy

- CKs and EXPs will receive complimentary day of departure upgrades from economy to premium economy

-FlyerBeek

Whooo! I wonder if there will be discounts or whatnot for paying for upgrades in advance.

This give me a glimmer of hope for AAdvantage. Also this:

is truly Going for Great™ in a completely non-sarcastic way.

Also, I wonder if the same is true for Miles & Copay upgrades?

And I wonder.

Will PE ticketed passengers have higher priority than Y ticketed pax for swu/miles upgrades to business class regardless of $$$ paid for ticket EQD to date or status?

Could see this being done for a short-term period (eg, 1 year) to introduce Y pax to the new cabin.

Any chance lower elites will be able to use 500 mile upgrades to get into premium economy? That actually seems reasonable to me; a US east coast-Europe trip would require about eight upgrades, cash value of $320, which strikes me as fair for a space-available upgrade to a cabin that sells for a ~$500 premium.

i doubt it. 500 mile upgrades have always been restricted to domestic trips.

I wonder if there will be anything for a lower level/non status companion on the same PNR as the CK/EXP, like the ability to upgrade using stickers domestically.

Perhaps. And my bet is that whenever the complimentary EXP upgrades to Premium Economy end on say international TPAC flights, this benefit's demise won't be too far removed (in one direction or another) from another SWU devaluation. But this could be years off and probably depends on what DL and UA end up doing.

Not true. For AA international flights to/from the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, Mexico, and other various parts of the Americas beyond the US, they have been allowed for a long time.

So have complimentary EXP upgrades, up until now...

I'm not saying it will be the case, but that isn't very good reasoning.

*North-America

Using 500 mile stickers on say international TPAC and TATL flights ? I doubt it. I expect it to turn out to be either complimentary for an EXP companion or discounted but requiring additional money (or miles or other instrument) for a companion or companions; and of those, I expect the complimentary to be far less likely to be around longer term if at all. But time will tell where this all goes.

I think that would be ver fair. To my eye, a fair upgrade priority would be
1. (Any) W -> J (C), CK, EXP, PPRO, PLAT, Gold, no-status
2. (Any) Y -> J (C), CK, EXP, PPRO, PLAT, Gold, no-status

I presume that W -> J will require fewer miles (or no copay) than Y -> J? But either way it will be one SWU? And of course W upgraded to J would earn 1.5 EQMs while Y upgraded to J would earn 1.0 EQMs. So these policies would still give an incentive to purchase W even if you're upgrading. (Whether it's worth it will of course depend on the details.)

This is a relief, for sure.

Still, it makes the SWU calculus a bit more complicated: As a leisure EXP (I'll probably requalify for 2018 on manufactured EQD), when I waitlist for a Y>J SWU, I'd now be behind all CK's, all EXP's with more EQD, all EXP's ticketed in W, and (possibly, depending on how they structure this) PP's, Plats, and Golds ticketed in W.

Of course, that still might not be very many people, given the small size of the W cabin, the fact that nobody of lower status will have SWU's, and the overall number of SWU's will be about half what it was last year.

Thanks to JonNYC and OMAAT for the (relatively) good news!

The scenario you describe is logical and customer-friendly. What does that tell you about its chances of being implemented?