Well then, you should be sure not to (be loyal), because they sure are not (valuing it).

FTF

It's rapidly declining though. Today's product is a shadow of what it was a year ago at this point.

Close enough. Future DL employee, or other airline employee (if not already, which is what I suspect).

Have you flown AA F since Sept. 2014?

Nah, if I was an airline employee, I'd probably be nonrevving haha. And honestly, I'll take pretty much whatever flying gig that comes my way when I graduate, except maybe Great Lakes Airlines, or aerial banner towing.

Looked through some of the earlier posts, but couldn't find a concrete answer:

Is it possible to only upgrade a single segment on a multi-stop itinerary if offered a FCM upgrade? I only want to upgrade the longest segment of the itinerary.

If you're offered a paid upgrade at the gate, that's often (maybe always) for the single segment.

I'm referring to the offers on Delta.com, or the app. At gate paid upgrades almost never happen anymore, IIRC.

Haha. It's USAirways first class now. It was so bad initially I believe AA has made one or two announced "enhancements" to its service.

^ This! AA F is sad sad sad now. Switched and happy about it.

I haven't heard good things about AA 737-800 first, which seems to be the primary mainline plane that AA flies domestically at this point. The meals also appear to be downright inedible in most cases.

So I guess the breakdown of the big three carriers goes as follows:

Delta if you care about OTP, baggage handling, and service.

AA if you care about a good FF program.

United if you care about none of those things (or are a hub captive).

At the end of the day, you just can't have it all it seems...

As a short-haul flyer primarily AA's F service could not have gotten any worse than I used to experience, and honestly it seems to have improved with better snacks and more frequent PDB, which is consistent with US service levels.

I often call in to do an FCM buy-up, and the agent always asks (if I haven't already specified) whether I want to upgrade all legs or just certain ones. So, it seems possible.

However, since I'm ATL-based, most of my routes are nonstop. I suspect that you must actually upgrade an entire fare segment at once. In theory you could break the fare (e.g., change BHM-(Y)-ATL-(Y)-LAS to BHM-(Y)-ATL-(F)-LAS), but in most cases, I'd suspect that the combination of the broken Y/F fares is actually more expensive than the through F fare.

I've been able to break my fares and upgrade only one segment at a time no problem.


the longer segments I pay up for and the shorter ones are usually upgraded for me anyway so as a data point, it is indeed possible.

I noticed, and that's surprising (considering that they only happened when medallion upgrades didn't fill F, so it's free money that doesn't cost goodwill).