dstan

I just redeemed a paper one on 2/5 that was not shipped until 2/13 for some reason. Noticed it has an expiration date of 2/28/2019 rather than the expected December or June date.

Moot now if they are moving to electronic, but will be interested to know what the expiration date is on these new electronic BXP1s.

MrJBoy

Terms and conditions says:
Upgrade awards expire one year from award redemption date. Travel must be completed by the expiration date, which is listed on the award redemption confirmation.

MrJBoy

I just called and applied BXP1 cert to my reservation.
The agent told me it took a while to see the upgrade request online.
Is that normal?
She said she removed an existing complementary upgrade request first then put the BXP1 upgrade request.
My reservation still says "complementary upgrade requested"

dkc192

I'm pretty sure AA.com is incapable of displaying BXP1 requests. Even with the upgrade waitlisted/requested, the website may continue to show either a complimentary upgrade requested or simply "not available" (or something to that effect).

dkc192

This might no longer apply if the new electronic BXP1s are indeed in place...but a "glitch" or "feature" of the paper BXP1 certificates is that in the event of a schedule change causing a ticket reissue, the OLCI block added by Meeting Services when confirming the BXP1 "falls off" the reservation, thereby enabling the traveler to OLCI and (theoretically) never have to surrender the certificate.

For folks who are interested, my understanding of how this works is that when Meeting Services confirms your upgrade, they merely book the C space, without reissuing the ticket into C (as is the case for SWUs or miles+copay upgrades), and add the OLCI block to ensure that you turn in the certificate at the airport. However, when a schedule change occurs, the ticket goes through the auto reissue process and somehow gets reissued into C, instead of merely having a "booking" for C. With that, the OLCI block goes away, presumably since the ticket has been "properly" reissued. Not sure if/how this applies for ticket reissues triggered by other circumstances requiring human review, such as making changes to other flights in the itinerary.

Again, not sure how the reported new electronic BXP1s will affect this "feature".

FleyeSkyHigh

That is exactly right, however, a number of months back they put a fix in place to sort of deal with the schedule change/re-issue/OLCI block problem. Starting sometime in 2017 or maybe earlier whenever a PNR/Ticket that was 'owned' by meeting services experienced a schedule change or other re-issue, the record was flagged for a manual review by a meeting services rep because the ticket needed to re-issue in original boarding class not the C or A inventory...along with correcting the re-issue they also many times remembered to put the OLCI block back in place. This largely caught most of the reservations that experienced the OLCI falling off the record although some still fell through the cracks.

Here's how the process works now that BXP1, BXP2, BXP3 and issued electronically. The redemption of BE points for the certificate is still done via the website but now instead of a paper certificate being mailed out an e-mail is sent to the BE customer (btw: the e-mail is hard coded to be the e-mail on file for the BE account) with a unique electronic code. Upon booking a BE upgrade the electronic code is verified by the mtg svcs rep and is flagged as used in their database. Then the upgrade is confirmed just as it was done before (but as you have stated, BE upgrade tickets are never reissued as to preserve the original booking class/code). The only difference is that they are no longer supposed to add the OLCI block. When cancelling or removing an electronic BE upgrade it is imperative to remind the mtg svcs rep flag the upgrade code as unused in their database especially since this is a new process. So remember it used to be a simple process to cancel or change a reservation with a BE applied upgrade (just click cancel on the website) but now those cancellations need to be done by phone with mtg svcs to 'return' the upgrade to the database. Once a BE upgrade is applied any future changes to the PNR have to be done by mtg svcs.

I will say that of the two electronic BXP1 that I have used so far, one still had the OLCI block which had to be resolved at the airport....so I imagine as with anything the learning curve on that will take time.

So the good news is there ***should*** no longer an OCLI block but the bad news is the chance to "re-used" uncollected BXP certs will become a thing of the past.

The other really bad news is that often I would also request many more BE upgrades than I actually had. In fact, if the space was available I would confirm the upgrade as there was no penalty if I decided no longer to use it at the last minute (for those that didn't know mtg svcs policy was always that they would readily remove the upgrade and restore you to your original cabin and booking class - even if the inventory of booking code was no longer available!) Then as travel dates became closer I would decide whether to remove the BE upgrade based on if I still had any certs, load in the J cabin or whether I would rather try for a complimentary EXP upgrade. The only downside was risking a slightly worse seat assignment in the original cabin. This method worked even better once upgrade request time became less important on the upgrade list. Now it seems BXPs are more like SWUs, in that once they are used or checked out they cannot be used again until the upgrade is cancelled or returned to the database. So this is a real blow as it was nice to be able to gobble up multiple upgrades and then decide which one to use closer to flight time.

Additional bad news is that with the old paper certs you would often get more than a year (sometimes up to 18+ months) of certificate validity whereas now it is much closer to just a single year.

Lastly, they are still using the old process (with OLCI block) for existing BXP-1 paper certs until they are all out of circulation (which I think will either be Feb or June of 2019).

davidsc111

True, I always had one in my drawer for last minute flights but I rarely requested these preemptively (before I had a flight booked with available C inventory). Now there is no risk of booking a last minute flight and not having time to get one so unless you use one and then cx the flight (certainly possible) there should be less breakage on our end. Once the OLCI block is solved and finding C inventory isn't like hunting for a unicorn I'll be happy.

mizzou miles

Interesting experience this morning. Called meeting svcs to apply a paper BXP1. Agent took the details and applied the cert and then said it was now electronic and there was no need to bring the cert to the airport. I've never seen this before...

chrisremo

I also called in to apply a paper BXP1 yesterday and the agent said the process had changed just a few days ago and this was the first time she had applied one the new way. It sounded like she was doing more to explicitly tie the certificate to the reservation, instead of simply earmarking it like they previously seemed to do.

txrus

Interesting to hear this-not my experience yesterday @ PHX (though, to be fair, as they themselves pointed out, most of the TA's there are LUS & 'know nothing about this program'), nor was that what meeting services told me earlier in the week when I had them on the phone to upgrade one of my staff.

dickinson

My issue is being required to pay a $200 per ticket change fee when upfaring to a class of economy where a BXP1 can be used, especially since it is so difficult to specify a booking class when purchasing a ticket.

DMPHL

There shouldn't be a $200 per ticket change fee, unless you're booking through a travel agent who charges it regardless. If you want to have AA do it directly, just make sure to mention the actual word upfare...I believe there is actually an upfare code that they put into the system when re-issuing the ticket that should waive the change fee. Travel agents should be able to do this, as well in SABRE.

You can also call Reservations and request a fare in a particular fare bucket.

dickinson

I booked the ticket on the AA website, there was no other party involved. I tried twice, once on the reservations line and once with Business Extra customer service, and both times was told the change fee is waived only when upfaring to first class, not to another class of economy. This fee had not been charged to me in the past, so it may be a recent change. I don't complain on this board a lot, but I really feel this charge is excessive and unreasonable.

aisleorwindow

HUACA

That's not right. You should be able to do this with the Business Extra desk for no change fee.

dickinson

Both of my calls were within the last 24 hours. On both I was on hold for a long time while the agent priced the upfare. So I did try the call back route, and believe there has been a policy change recently implemented. Not much point in trying to use these BXP1 upgrades when asked to pay $200 per ticket in addition to the fare difference.