BR787

https://onemileatatime.com/news/amer...rocal-upgrades

Seems like a new development. Anyone have more information?

Chiller3333

This sounds exciting.
Looking forward to more details coming out, espcially how the two upgrades on AA will be handed out to BAEC members.

scubadu

Deleted...

BR787

Sheesh you seem like a basket of fun.

Things like

1. When will they be available
2. How to apply them

Would be useful.

Foofighter69

Thanks for posting this. This looks like a genuine improvement for most Golds who don’t get any GUFs.

And even for GGLs this adds more options for proactive upgrades given C availability as an AA fare bucket seems pretty generous?

Also at the moment I am quite fed up of avocado-sesame-chicken-shank so I might swap and fly AA for a change in the coming weeks!

I wonder if AA-linked Tier points will post quickly and correctly with a SW? Who’s going to be the Guinea pig?

crazy8534

A potentially exciting development although it will no doubt further increase pressure on BA award availability.

BR787

I'm happy to be a guinea pig for upgrading from J to A on October LAX<->JFK transcontinental flights connecting to/from LHR if we get the upgrade infrastructure + certs in time. Will also check if this gets access to FFD, which in theory it should...

Chiller3333

Will likely have another few AA flights coming up later this year as well and would give Premium Economy to Business a try.
Not sure how they'll handle any differences in taxes though.

Prospero

An interesting development but with all upgrade instruments the devil really is in the detail. For example, any restrictions on underlying fare classes, such only combinable with full fare tickets. Also will copayments apply and if so, how much will they be?

BR787

The article says all published fares, including basic economy, are eligible for upgrades.

I'm glad it's not restricted to full fare. On *A, Star Alliance Upgrade Awards are mostly restricted to full fare tickets which makes *A partner upgrades pretty useless. By the time I'm buying a full fare J ticket, I would have bought discount F if possible.

orbitmic

I totally realise/accept that i'll come across as very selfish here, but as a GGL with some GUFs, I can't say I am too happy with the news. I mostly see it as now needing to compete with countless AA members to be able to upgrade on BA on transatlantic (I don't care that the AA forum keeps saying that getting status on AA is now incredibly difficult, I still have the impression that AA distributes status like peanuts), and with a lot more people to be able to upgrade on AA flights depending on the availability of that incredibly ellusive award space (whilst AA elites can use their instruments for space available upgrades if I am not mistaken) on AA long haul and transcon flights as now all BA elites will get two equivalent of the GUFs that I only start earning at 2,500 TPs.

Again, I appreciate that this is excellent news for many people, and good for them, but to be entirely candid, and from my selfish point of view, I am actually fairly convinced that based on my specific situation as described at the start of this post (GGL, multiple GUFs), I will be worse off rather than better off as a result of it.

Incidentally, given the "as of today" reference, if we have all received two AA systemwide upgrades of sort, I really do wonder why none of us have been informed!

Chiller3333

According to the OMAAT article the AA SWUs book into award classes, whereas our GUFs go into I and A, with the ability to open up reward space in Business with GGL redemptions.
Yes, it'll hurt a bit, not going to argue with that, but I don't think it'll matter much.
Let's see.

VSLover

i have found using my GGL upgrade instruments much easier in the first 6 years of the program than i did using my SWUs in my 10+ years as an EXP with AA so yeah i guess i do agree with some above who note that i'm not terribly excited by AA OWEs using space that otherwise would have been available for GGLs.

it is rare that i've found pricing an ex-EU ticket on AA to be better than BA (easier to price multi-cities on AA website).

but waiting to hear more specifics on this and what buckets are affected.

DeltaFlyingProf

What I'm not sure to understand is exactly what tickets we'll be able to upgrade.
I'm about to buy a transatlantic ticket in business and AA is the cheapest. However from the link, the ticket has to be issued by BA. Should I call the BA GGL team and ask them to book AA coded and operated flights?

orbitmic

Indeed, but bear in mind that of course, buckets' availability is all linked rather than compartimentalised. In other words, RM functions in such a way that effectively any seat filled in any class will affect availability in lower buckets but may also affect availability in higher buckets. An airline may perfectly decide to open a seat that will be available as I or U and close it in both I and U when it is purchased as either. In that sense, this may also result in I or A inventory being less easy to get despite the SWU users do not have access to it.