Betty Johnson

Does anyone with BA Silver status have experience with operational or airport upgrades on transatlantic BA codeshare flights with American Airlines? I booked a RT ticket in premium economy as a BA codeshare with AA from LAX to LHR a few months back, and had hoped to purchase upgrades in at least one direction when the flights were getting a little closer to departure. However, upgrades are no longer available in either direction, even for foolishly high prices...

1Aturnleft

My experience with AA Airport upgrades is that they may be offered upon request, however keep in mind these would not be eligible for Avios/tier points in the same way BA ooerated AUP's do. Also keep in mind the way in which AA actively upgrades their own elites into available seats in the days leading up to departure who have the ability to wait list for upgrades using upgrade certificates within their own frequent flyer programme means more often than not on the day upgrades for cash won't be possible..... but of course stranger things have happened so it's always worth asking.

c1223

Coincidentally the last post in the "So - who got a free upgrade this week?" thread was

Also, from my experience, if available you can upgrade at the airport, but not as good/easy as BA's AUPs as explained by 1Aturnleft.
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What are your flight numbers/dates, and maybe someone can check current availability for you.

Betty Johnson

@c1223, very interesting that a BA executive club member recently was op-up'd on a BA codeshare with AA. I'll go to the BA flight load thread and see if anyone can help out with information.

eefor jfp

It just goes to show you that you can learn something new every day. I had absolutely no idea that AA flew its own metal from Seattle to London; I thought they were all BA codeshares. I mean, Seattle's not a hub for them. I'm actually pretty stunned. And since it's not a hub, maybe that flight would be a good place to find tickets with miles or Avios.

Robespierre

Hi - as the BA passenger Op Up'd then some extra words on the subject might help. AA's App shows the upgrade waitlist and number of seats available. In this case with 24hours to go there were no names on it and 9 J seats going free so any SWU upgrades would have cleared and it just depended on the oversold seats in W and Y plus loading the staff standbys and then the algorithm for allocating AA Elites vs OW Elites. We both got the upgrade notification 20 mins before checkin closed. The aircraft departed with all seats in J and W occupied so there were at least 18 people who had a happier day than they expected!.

I flew AA a few times as a non rev (family member, not employee) over 30 years ago and they were very strict about seating you as per your entitlement and would upgrade revenue pax to give you a standby seat rather than put you in the higher cabin.

You are right that this was always a route with 2 BA-operated flights a day but since the transatlantic alliance agreement with AA it makes little difference if one flight is now AA and one BA since the revenue is pooled on the route.

orbitmic

In my experience, prime and codeshared bookings are treated essentially indifferently for Op up purposes (but not usually for promotional upgrade purposes).

Op ups tend to be given very much in priority to one's own frequent flyers and I think it is even more true of AA compared to others. Having said that, I have been upgraded a couple of times on AA and know other people who have been too. I have also been upgraded on the likes of QR, CX, AY and QF among others.

Jpm81

Amazon and Microsoft have huge offices in Seattle.

When you go to check in there, they actually have a lane set aside for employees of those companies. They will be making big money from the corporate contracts from there.