I believe what happens behind the scene is you will burn a 500-mile upgrade, hence the requested notation, and you will be gifted one to make up for it. The net result being 0 to you. Sounds like the note tries to address both the comp'd upgrades for elites under 500 miles and all flights for EXPs.

Do EQMs earned via credit card spend count towards the "sticker" counter?
 

Do the EQMs earned from credit card spend (Barclays Aviator Silver) count towards the counter (10,000 EQMs prior to March 1) for earning stickers/500 mile upgrades?

Anyone know the answer to this? My 500 mile upgrade counter is currently at 4,928 EQMs for next set of 500 mile upgrades. I am expecting 5,000 EQMs from spending 10K on my Barclays Aviator Silver. Will these 5,000 EQMs count towards the 500 mile upgrade balance or ONLY to the obtain elite status?

I don't know the terms for the Barclays card, but do the T&Cs specifically state 5k EQMs or just miles? If just miles, they mean RDMs for award travel. Should be clearly stated, but not surprised if not.

I have never seen an offer like this based on RDMs and the account summary information labels it as "EQMs needed to earn 500-mile upgrades".. The basic question is whether the EQMs have to come from flying

AA does maintain many different numbers, but they seem to label them differently (i.e. million miler miles vs program miles). So if the promo is offering EQMs they should count towards the 500-mile upgrades.

There have been many programs that offered RDMs that did not bump your 500-mile upgrade counter (i.e. Rewards Dining). There is a slight chance that Barclays has mislabeled their presentation, but I hope AA vetted their material.

Is there anyone out there with the Barclays card that can chime in with their experience? Unfortunately AA does not provide full disclosure about what transactions have incremented which counters.

I finally received a phone call back from AAdvantage customer service after sending them an email a few weeks ago regarding the 5,000 EQMs (for every $20K in spend, up to 10,000 EQMs annually) from Barclays. A few things:

1) The 5,000 EQMs are only supposed to count for elite status. They not supposed to count for the 500-mile upgrade EQM counter.

2) AAdvantage recognizes that it's not clear AA.com or any of the Barclays terms regarding what the 5,000 EQMs from card spend should or should not count towards.

3) There will be a clarification from either AA or Barclays coming in the near future.

All that said, AAdvantage manually included the 5,000 EQMs in the counter for 500 mile upgrades which put me over the 10K mark for four more upgrades. Now lets see if I can actually use the upgrades!

So the bottom line is if you have EQMs from Barclays, contact AA customer service right away. Once the language is clarified, they won't honor the EQMs from card spend for anything except accruing elite status.

Thanks for the update. Sounds like there will be another number to track, 500-mile upgrade miles, for those that earn them.

Am I correct these same miles will count for RDMs too? Granted status may be an important goal, but miles that can be used to travel on are also good.

The EQMs earned from card spend are not redeemable miles. That is spelled out somewhere either with Barclays or AA. The same thing existed pre-merger when Barclays (and earlier Bank of America) had the US Airways credit cards.

How long does it typically take to have the 500-mile upgrades deposited? It's been about a week since the miles posted.

Not that long; maybe an extra day or two after the miles post.

Thanks, guess I'll contact them.

500 Mile Upgrade requests from my account never stick for my Companion
 

I am not sure which existing thread this question might fit in with, so I'll take a stab here on asking about this:

I'm a Platinum AAdvantage member and every single time I request an upgrade from my bank of 500-mile certs for my companion (same itinerary, different Record Locator) the request doesn't stick, they are getting an error message at check-in, and their name does not appear on the waiting list at the gate. I will call and always be told they are on the list, but they never are when I go to the gate.

Efforts to call to get this fixed have been fruitless, the telephone agents can't see the issue, and either can't or won't transfer me to someone who can see the issue. A request to have this apparent problem with the upgrade programming for companions written up and given to the web programming team have been met with "it is not possible", no one can contact them, no we can transfer this information to someone who can get it to them, etc. answers.

Am I just unlucky or does anyone else have experience with or know a solution to this problem?

At least this problem keeps me from depleting my 500-mile certs. Of course it also means they never get used.

I've had the problem several times as well. It seems that it won't process the upgrades if they come from my account. If my companion has upgrades in their account, then it will go through.

I ran into the same problem with 500 milers not posting more than a week after crossing 10k EQM. The rep stated that there apparently was an issue if you crossed the threshold on January 30th or 31st they would not post. AA is aware of the problem but I still haven't received my 500 milers 11 days after crossing 10k and 3 days after calling.