gman1118

Hello all,

I have never upgraded with miles before and was wanting to book a full-fare main cabin (Y class) and upgrade to business class by using 25,000 miles. When my confirmation email came out, they ticketed me for an O class which is discount economy. I reached out to AA and they told me my main cabin economy rt of $998 is the cheapest main cabin fare and to upgrade me to an Y I would have needed to pay $5425 RT. This sounded ridiculous to me since premium economy RT was $2779 and RT business class seats were $4316. She said what I am looking at are the cheapest available AA seats and Y class cannot be booked online and I have to call someone to make that booking.
Can someone tell me if this makes sense and if they run into this issue before that to upgrade to business class, I would first have to spend $5425 for a Y class economy seat and then spend 25,000 miles to upgrade to business class seat or else just buy the business class seat for $4316 and save money.

Dave Noble

Depends on what the route is as for the applicable fare

A Y basis ticket can be very expensive , would expect it to be more expensive than discount PE and possibly more than discount business

What is the route?

As an example, JFK-LHR r/t starts at $591 r/t plus taxes in O class whilst Y class starts at $4718 plus taxes/charges
Premium economy starts at $1081plus taxes/ and business at $2216 plus taxes

If upgrading using miles, then it is likely better value to use the higher mileage plus co-pay that is needed for O class, than to pay for Y

e.g. for JFK-LHR it would be 25,000 mlles plus $350 from discount economy each way vs the 15,000 miles needed to upgrade from full economy

the extra 20,000 plus $700 may well work out better value

Note: you would have to pay any additional taxes too regardless of which upgrade you use

Zacnlinc

Buy J and earn more LP! That's the nature of the Game these days!

JJeffrey

It makes perfect sense as a full Y fare between US>Europe is always going to be prohibitively expensive.

If you want to upgrade, you can always upgrade from any normal economy fare to business for 25k miles + $350. In most circumstances there is no reason to purchase a full Y fare for the purpose of upgrading.

platbrownguy

Just wait until he finds out that even if he had a prohibitively expensive Y ticket, he'd still need to find prohibitively unobtainable upgrade-C space.

KDCAflyer

I miss the old days on Delta (and possibly AA) when you could ask to be up-fared to full Y during IRROPs (for free) and beat everyone on the upgrade list for your new flight.

cvision

Still happens on DL occasionally, especially on non 006 issued tickets where the DL irrops lead to a reissue on 006.

ijgordon

It would seem to me to be a no-brainer to pay $4316 for business class instead of $5425+25,000 miles. (Though isn’t full fare upgrade only 15k?)

Antarius

Y fares are almost always comical. Far easier to buy discount J.

I did have a weird situation in 2021 where a UK-US roundtrip was 2k USD (around Christmas) and to book the same in full fare Y was 100 USD more. Booked that and used 15k miles for each to move to J.

Dave Noble

Depends on your needs. If you need a fully flexible/refundable ticket then it makes sense.

donotblink

As an fyi O is the deepest discount fare class that’s not basic economy. It’s generally the absolute lowest price AA will offer on a route. Y is the highest fare for economy and is generally purchased by business travelers who are flying the same day their ticket is purchased (obviously that’s a massive generalization)

AJNEDC

Aren't full Y fare just used for fare construction purposes? Don't understand why anyone would seek to purchase one when J discounted J would be less expensive.

Dave Noble

No they are not. A full fare economy ticket is fully flexible and refundable whilst a discounted business class ticket will likely have cancellation penalties, may have purchasing restrictions / minimum stay restrictions. If needing the flexibility, a discounted business ticket will not meet the requirements

Fare construction can ( and needs to be able to ) be done on any booking class

HaleiwaFlyer

Don’t you think airlines just need to have 3 types of fares: basic economy equivalent non refundable, can get trip credit, and can refund to method of payment?? Just add in dynamic pricing and class of services to adjust price of these three fare classes.

The old days of different classes of tickets are unnecessarily over complicated.

trooper

Seems airlines almost all disagree with you. (And your system doesn't sound all that simple, but I shall look forward to seeing how it works when you start your on airline...)