Using Aadvantage miles to upgrade
 

I reserved an "o" class fare from Miami to Joahannesburg via Heathrow (non refundable, $ to make changes, but upgradeable) for an international flight in March, 8 months out. Before paying, I called in to make sure I could upgrade using mileage award.(Neither my partner or I can fly such a long time in economy -we are in our 70's with leg swelling, etc.) Was told No award seats available in Business. I could be wait listed in case of cancellation. I understand the seats in business are not sold, but reserved for the possible cash buyer. Anyone care to guess what the chances are that we will be able to get 2 seats with miles within an 8-month period? If we can't upgrade, we can't travel-and so we would lose the price of the ticket. Any thoughts?

sirmikal Welcome to FT

As a guess route is MIA-LHR-JNB
MIA-LHR operated by which airline?
LHR-JNB is probably operated by British Airways. O class ticket will not be able to upgraded with AA miles. Needs to to Y or B class, and then unsure if that route is upgradable with AA miles

LHR-JNB has a lot of demand for business class awards.

(this thread will be moved to the AA forum)

If your Miami to London segment is on AA then you might be able to upgrade using miles.

Like Mwenezi posted above, BA O class ticket can't be upgraded with AA miles so you are out of luck for the segment from London to Johannesburg. If you really can't stand economy, you should cancel your ticket (no fees charged if you are within 24 hours) or change it (charge of up to $450 for an international itinerary).

May I ask why didn't you just book business class if you can't fly in economy otherwise? These award upgrades are not guaranteed and not worth the gamble of a roundtrip ticket price.

I took a quick look in March and there are a number of dates with single award seats in business, though the options for two seats on the same flight really reduces your options, and the last date with seats coming back is March 8. Can you fly separately? Depart in late February? Be prepared to pay hefty fuel surcharges on BA.

Have you though about award travel in first class? There's two seats there March 10-28.

You really do need to check every day as availability can vary all over the place.

As mentioned, the 'O' fare will not be upgradable, but you should also note that the (full fare) economy tickets on BA metal are only upgradable to World Traveller Plus, an enhanced economy product but not lay-flat business seats. If the latter is important to you, you may wish to consider changing your travel plans (though if you are restricted to AA partners, you may have to look to Qatar Airways).

I gave you a lengthy answer to this question on your TripAdvisor thread - http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic...ir_Travel.html

And when do you decide that? :confused: A waitlisted upgrade on an actual AA flight, even if comes, might come in each direction until you're at the gate, shortly before boarding! That means you might not know by the time you board the outbound whether you'll get upgraded on the return (since you're not returning at the same as you're going outbound, of course).

But to make it simpler: You're guaranteed to not get upgraded to business on the LHR-JNB legs, for multiple reasons: Because it's BA, and you can't upgrade at all with AA miles on an O fare on BA; because it's BA, and you can't upgrade from economy to business on BA from any fare at all (only to premium economy, which BA calls World Traveler Plus or WT+).

So if you know right now you can't possibly be upgraded on LHR-JNB, and that's live-or-die for you, you might as well cancel the ticket right now. No point in waiting for something that can never happen.

Obviously, in retrospect, I think you see that you have researched all this before you bought the tickets. But as I surmise from your TripAdvisor thread, you didn't know about FlyerTalk before someone there referred you to it.

What you may not know is that there are other carriers who may be able to get you from MIA to JNB on an outright business award, that don't show up on aa.com, such as Etihad. (Though obviously, you need more miles for an outright business award than for upgrade awards, and I don't know if you have enough miles.) Another thing you might not know is that it may be easier to book awards about 11 months out (when the flights first appear in the schedules) than anytime later. Anything thing you might not know is that it may be harder to find 2 seats on an award (or for that matter, upgrade) than just 1 seat (so you need to careful when evaluating other people success' stories to know whether they were traveling solo or as a pair).

That's why you need to learn a lot before you'll necessarily know everything you know to get this trip to happen all in business class (in a way that you can afford, assuming you can't afford to just buy business class seats right now). EIther that, or you need to (a) have more than enough miles for whatever the solution might be and (b) hire a professional mileage award search outfit to find you flights that would work for you. (I know such services exist because I see them mentioned on blogs. I don't know how many people on FlyerTalk use them, because I rarely see them mentioned in FlyerTalk posts.)

The American Express Platinum card (that's the real Platinum card, not platinum-colored affinity cards that they issue in cooperation with Delta, Hilton, etc.) gives you a discount of up to $2,500 on the second business or first class ticket if you buy it through AmEx. That's way more than the $450 annual fee for the card in the U.S. They have this arrangement with a lot of airlines, though not every airline. If you happen to have that card already or qualify for it, that might make buying the tickets practical.

Does this $2500 discount for business mean you have to book through AMEX travel agents or do you just have to charge to your card?

Also does the benefit still apply if you purchase two tickets for family members, but you yourself are not travelling? [If not, can you get around this by adding them as an additional card member and using that to pay for the airfare?]

Sorry to hijack your thread OP.

If you are going to buy 2 business class tickets consider the ME3:- Emirates(EK), Eithad(EY) & Qatar(QR). QR(OneWorld) & EY are AA partners (for earning)
Other airlines will also get you to South Africa

You must book through Amex travel service. I'm not sure if the cardholder has to travel, but I believe so.

A second call to Aadvantage desk made it clear bout the O class not being upgradeable on BA. The first call, the agent said the opposite. Scary in itself. The upgradeable fare is $10,000 for 2 + 160,000 miles, as as everyhone pointed out, not guaranteed. $20,000 for outright purchase of business is beyond our means. So South Africa is out of reach for us. I do see that SAA business is (much) less that half that but the reviews of that airline are so devastating I am just too faint of heart to attempt it. Thanks to everyone who replied. Very helpful. I will continue to look for a southern hemisphere getaway in March which is either closer, cheaper, or both.

You might want to post what you're looking for in the South America forum. You'll get some replies from people who are fans of [insert country name here] and refuse to believe that any other destination could possibly be worthwhile, but you'll also get some good input.

But what does "up to" mean? For example, can you knock a (second) $3000 business class price down to $500 (by getting a discount of $2500), or is the discount much more meager with lower-end business class prices?

(I'm not saying the OP's business class price would be only $3000 in this case, I'm just asking for clarification of whether the full $2500 amount applies in most cases, or only for the top end of business/first class fares.)

LAN periodically has business class sales from Miami to a few places in South America like Lima or Buenos Aires. And LAN is an AA partner (via oneworld), so if you buy those discount business class sale fares from LAN you should be able to earn AA miles, if you wish, on those flights.

See this thread in the LAN forum for some info:
A reason email that I got from LAN said fly from Miami to Bogota for just $699 round-trip per person. Obviously, somewhat more for Lima or Buenos Aires (how much more I can't pull up any more since that particular sale ended about a week ago), but still low prices compared to normal business class seat prices to South America.

Two things. First, round trips on Virgin Atlantic, BA, or Lufthansa in premium economy from MIA to JNB in March are running between $2100 and $2400, so more than coach but nothing like the $5,000 or so for business class. PE can make quite a difference on these long flights

Second, slightly off-topic, but bear with me...

How often do you travel? Do you have anything like a "master plan" for travel covering the next couple of years?

I get what you're saying about long flights with aging legs (or brains). Been there (still there) done that (still doing it.) :(

Let's imagine you like traveling, but want to do it more comfortably. So here's a "what if."

Fly one way to Joburg in March in a combination of premium economy (to Istanbul) and business (IST-JNB) on Turkish Airlines, a superior carrier. Turkish is quoting a price of $1600 one way from Miami; you can stop over in Istanbul if you like for a slight increase in price.

When you're ready to come home from SA, you use the first segment on a business class round-the-world ticket that you've bought before leaving home. RTW tickets are priced very differently depending on the country where travel starts and ends, with the differences being very dramatic.

For example, a four continent Oneworld Explorer RTW ticket in business class started in the US costs around $11,000 plus taxes. The same ticket, bought and started in South Africa, costs $4750 plus taxes.

For that five grand, you get up to 16 flights in business or first class, covering four continents, with the ticket being good for a year. There are lots of rules, of course, but the big ones are that you have to cross both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans going in the same direction. With the Oneworld ticket you don't have any maximum mileage limits, but there are some restrictions on routes, for example only one nonstop coast-to-coast flight in North America, etc.

You earn full miles on these tickets, and quite a lot of them, as well as bonuses for class of service, or elite bonuses if you fly enough to meet the elite threshold (which you will, easily.)

So back to your plan. Here you are in South Africa. You can get home via stopovers in Europe, Asia or Australia. Or say your "master plan" (aka bucket list) includes a trip to New Zealand. So you fly from Cape Town or Joburg to, say, Paris. Maybe hit London or Amsterdam or Seville, or Jerusalem, while you're in the neighborhood. No problem, just some of your 16 flights, using the (maximum of) four that the ticket allows in Europe or the Middle East.

Then over the water to Miami. Now, you have up to six flights available to use in North America, which includes the Caribbean and Central America. Alaska cruise? Canadian Rockies? Wherever, over the next few months you take weekenders to New York or San Francisco, or Vancouver or Costa Rica. All riding up front. The only time deadline is that you have to end the ticket before 12 months are up.

Anyway, time comes for your trip to New Zealand. Fly to Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane from the US, then hop over the Tasman to Auckland or Christchurch or wherever. Then back to Sydney, maybe a visit to the Great Barrier Reef or Ayre's Rock (Uluru), then the long flight back to Joburg, and your circle is done. Here's an imaginary route that would be doable with this ticket.

Here's another one (five continents, around $5400) that includes Buenos Aires and Easter Island (on your bucket list? Should be.) Same idea - stop in Europe/Middle East on the way home, hang out at home for months, maybe with a short shot to California, then return to South Africa via South America, New Zealand and Australia.

Now, flying this route would earn you up to 100,000 AA miles, maybe more once you qualify for elite status. You could use those miles to fly home at the end of the trip (plan your return when you can find award seats from South Africa.)

Or, you could do as we've done, just buy another RTW ticket and fly for another year up front - 16 business- or first class flights at an average cost of $275 or so per segment. That's good for Miami to Boston, pretty impressive for New York to Hong Kong, or Miami to Buenos Aires.

Obviously five grand is a lot to pay for a ticket, but if you view it as a year's travel in premium classes, I think it's a terrific bargain. But you need to have a plan in place before shelling out the bucks.

Note that South Africa is currently the cheapest place - in US$ terms - for Oneworld business class RTW tickets, but there are some other places - closer to home - where the prices are still way less than the US. Japan is cheap for the moment, as is Egypt.

I know this is a lot to swallow all at once, so let me direct you to a couple of other resources. First is a little "primer" I wrote for TripAdvisor, here.

Second are the "global alliance" boards here on Flyertalk, where RTW tickets and similar products are dissected and parsed like they're the Talmud.

Maybe not for you, but maybe worth considering.

Well done Gardyloo for taking the time for such an excellent arabesque! ^

Wow. We have thought about an rtw ticket but never understood what a great tool it could be-IF you have the know how. I traveled overland in my camper in the 70's from NY to Tierra del Fuego and again from Capetown to Cairo. Figuring out airline ticketing seem only slightly more arduous, but You have made a great case. I'm a convert.