Instant upgrade disappeared - getting it back?
 

A bit of an odd situation, but I was wondering if anyone's had similar experiences or ideas. I decided I preferred to credit to another OW airline rather than use my status benefits since I was going to pay for an instant upgrade. Plus I'm only Gold, almost certainly not enough to get a complimentary upgrade on this flight. Since I hadn't assigned seats or otherwise used any of my AA status, a chat CSR was able to remove my AA #. However, the instant upgrade disappeared. I figured it might reappear after a day or so, but still nothing. First chat CSR was thoroughly useless...

I'm pretty sure there's still space, the offer disappeared immediately after my AA number was removed. It's two days before the flight, and there's still pretty much every J cabin booking class available down to I, but no upgrade offers. Anyone know any magic words that would fix this, or am I SOL and should just add back my AA number?

The best of my knowledge a AA CSR can not help you with those pay for upgrades on the AA app. I would put the AA number back and you could always switch it prior to departure again.

I don't see any T&Cs online that would suggest that you must be an Aadvantage member (and have your Aadvantage number on the reservation) in order to receive and purchase instant upgrade offers. However it wouldn't surprise me if the AA software won't work without it.

I wonder if members of other OneWorld programs see the offers. One of the requirements is that the flight be AA marketed and operated, so if they bought a BA codeshare, for example, they wouldn't see it.

At this point I would try adding your AA# back and seeing if the offers return. If yes, grab one if you want, then just change again to whatever program you want to credit to.

I am not an AAdvantage member. I credit all my flights to BA. I see in-app upgrade offers all the time on AA-issued tickets. These never show on a BA-issued ticket, whether on AA prime or codeshares.

then join, it's free, and then you can see if the suggestion already offered by others will turn out to be true: that your upgrade offer may return once you enter your new AA number
But i'm puzzled about you preferring not to use your "status benefits" from AA if you don't have an AA account.

I see offers with my BA number in there already. So I don’t need them to return. I wouldn’t have any status benefits with a basic AA account. I have a boat load of status benefits with my BA number. So as a rational actor, I use my BA number.

I get that

Since you're experiencing difficulty getting the offer to come back visible., It's just a suggestion for you to try it to trigger what you want to come back, nothing else

Whatever you did to get it removed before you can certainly do again if it doesn't work to reset the offer

I think you are responding to wrong OP, maybe i'm wrong @threeten is the OP that commented on not suing his AA benefits.

Yep, I'm the OP :P

The offers did in fact reappear when I re-added my AA #. They also had appeared initially while there was no FF# at all. After I purchased the upgrade (one leg only) the second leg remained available for an instant upgrade. I was able to switch the FF# back to Qantas and the upgrade offer disappeared again. I was just worried nothing would bring them back and thought someone might have experience with this.

I'm guessing that this is an inadvertent result of AAs procedures to try to ensure that you can't use AA status benefits while crediting to another airline. Recent DPs made it sound like they were training reps to not allow that.

If I'm reading this correctly, jsut leave your FF number blank until DoD (day-of departure) and then switch it to QF. What's the downside based on what you are experiencing and desire? Or are you just posting data points?

Purchasing an upgrade is not a status benefit of AA membership - there is no entitlement to upgrade offers - there may be link towards what is in the booking, but can always just be that it isn''t offering a discounted uprade at the time

Phone agents can rebook using a 1st class fare but online offers are just available online

As Dave Noble said to the best of my knowledge the phone CSRs can not ever do these upgrades even if pops up on your AA phone app and you have elite elite status. they just are not set up on purpose to do these upgrades where a algo gives you a upgrade offer for miles or money

Basically it's another one of those AA IT quirks that will cause more headache trying to understand than just accepting. It's similar to the upgrade for money option disappearing if you have a SWU attached to any portion of itinerary even if the SWU would not cover the flight in question (e.g. SWU the outbound, upgrade offers disappear on the inbound)