doubleAAdude

Hello!

Quick question about tickets that I booked, in August for flights over Xmas/NYE, with American in Economy.

When I booked there was only a Business or Economy Option but due to an equipment change last week there is now a leg on AA metal with Premium Economy on the return.

Is there anyway that American will let me pay a reasonable difference to be in Premium Economy for that leg? I tried calling and the agent told me that all I could do was to pay the difference ($2000) to Biz for all 3 flights of the return journey. This seems a bit excessive and had Premium Eco been available when I booked for a reasonable amount I would have chosen it. Now it seems foolish that they'd turn down a customer who'd be willing to pay a little bit more for Premium Eco especially as Premium Eco is totally empty as it was never offered till last week.

For what it's worth, not sure that it has any relevance, the outbound routing is a combination of 2 Iberia flights and 1 AA flight whilst the return is 2 AA flights and a BA flight and as I mentioned all booked as one ticket on AA.

Thanks a lot for your advice

AUSINSIGHT

Are you by any chance Executive Platinum? If so, there is a CHANCE they might upgrade you at the gate. Beyond that, I had the same situation on a return from CDG to DFW this spring and they had no way to sell me an upgrade whatsoever and on that flight didn't even upgrade executive platinums but instead filled the cabin with non-revs.

It makes absolutely no sense and isn't logical, but it seems to be their policy.

doubleAAdude

I'm only Gold so I can cross my fingers and wish upon a star.

Given that the flight is 2 months out, I can't imagine that they'll manage to fully sell an entire Premium Eco cabin it so it seems totally illogical. Oh well

SeattleDavid

Are they selling PE on that flight, or is it just a plane with PE, but they're only selling Y and J? (You should be able to tell by trying to book a one-way ticket on just that segment and see if it offers a PE fare.)

If the former then I would expect you to be able to upfare (though maybe only if available on all segments) and if the latter then the PE seats will probably be allocated to EXPs in advance and to others at checkin (as needed).

doubleAAdude

They're selling PE now that they've made the equipment change.

I would have thought that it would be possible to upfare to PE but the agent told me, after conferring with the rate desk, that they could only upfare me to biz for all 3 of my legs on the return for $2000. Supposedly no way just to make an adjustment to one leg.

MADPhil

Does that mean that if you try to buy your itinerary now they don't offer it with PE on that segment? If they do then you should be able to buy up, if not then AA are missing an opportunity. BA will sell mixed segments like that.

doubleAAdude

I now see the error of my ways.

AA is selling PE just for the MIA-LHR leg, but not for my itinerary SKB-GVA. For my itinerary they are just selling Eco and Biz as they don't seem to do mixed segments.

Seems like they should figure a way out to accommodate this sort of occurrence

MADPhil

You would think that, since they can mix J/F with Y when J/F are not available on a segment, the code to do it would already exist and it wouldn't be a big deal. But then any change in an airline booking system is a big deal!

AlwaysAisle

When I did buy up from Econ to Prem Econ on JL code share flight, AA flight number on AA ticket, an agent who did the ticketing change told me first half of this year AA changed some coding on Prem Econ on their reservation system. AAgents should know of those changes but most do not, if an AAgent look up Prem Econ in old ways it will show as no availability and an AAgent simply assume it is sold out or not available.

My case I hung up and call again three or four times and finally got an AAgent who knew what to do correctly. This agent explained to me why all previous agents simply told me Prem Econ was not available or sold out.

If that is the case then it is likely AA is missing out on revenue opportunity with Prem Econ. My case after two calls I could have gave up, I did not have to fly Prem Econ, could have just settled into Econ, but I decided to give few more try and finally able to buy up to Prem Econ on JL code share segment.

andersonCooper

Not familiar with the JP route, but is this on AA or JL metal?

doubleAAdude

So I guess I'll call back a couple of times to see if there's some way for them to do mixed segments but I have to imagine that if they're not offering my itinerary with PE then it's going to be rather difficult.

Seems foolish to say the least

sdsearch

They probably will eventually. But this sounds like "teething" problems, which take a while for them to figure out. As soon as they get sales figures back that show Premium Economy undersold because it was no available on a per-leg basis, they'll figure out how to do it and make it a priority then.

As you mentioned, there was no way to book PE at all a few months ago, and so this is just version 1.0 of booking PE, with the inevitable bugs that anything released at version 1.0 typically has.

Andriyko

AA does offer PE fares from SKB to GVA, however, you'll be seated in economy on all segments where there is no PE cabin. You can't upgrade just one segment (you will break the fare and it will be too expensive). You need to ask AA to recalculate either the outbound or the inbound (or both) in PE. I believe you will only be able to upgrade one segment at the airport otherwise.

The cheapest return PE fare is about US$ 400 more expensive than the cheapest economy fare (so, about US$ 200 per direction + change fees).

jay_dubya

No change fees for upfaring

Andriyko

Yes, sorry, I forgot that AA does not charge change fees in situations like this.