One World upgrades
 

Finally I have enough Aadvantage miles to upgrade to business for our South African trip. Problem is that route is dominated by BA. Even though the website says Aadvantage miles can upgrade 1 class on BA, the agent on the phone says no, only BA miles can be used to upgrade on BA. Did I just get the wrong agent? Attitude +++. Iberia is the alternative, allowing Aadvantage miles to upgrade.
Iberia also has a promotional business class ticket. To buy the upgradeable fare (flexible) costs more than just paying for business outright. Likewise on BA. Only a "premium economy" FLEX fare can be upgraded, and the price is frequently more that an outright business class ticket. Wow. Is the flex feature really more valuable than the class of service?

There is no such thing as "One World upgrades".

AA/BA/IB have a cross airline upgrades subject to t&c's. A lot of t&c's!
Look here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...aster-thd.html

If you have AA miles you can, subject to availability, get an award flight on a range of airlines to South Africa. Try BA, QF, QR, EY & CX (but have not checked if all fly to RSA)

You didn't get the wrong agent, you got the wrong fare.

The only BA fares that can be upgraded with AA miles are the ridiculously expensive ones.

It's not an upgrade option designed for leisure travelers. It's only designed to allow those business travelers who had to buy an expensive last-minute (or fully refundable) fare to upgrade with miles.

Flex fares are valuable for some business flyers, who don't know their schedule much in advance. They're rarely valuable for leisure flyers, unless perhaps the difference in cost is minimal, which it can be on some airlines such as LATAM on intra-Argentina flights, but not on AA or BA international flights certainly!

Upgrades on international flights are few and far between. They generally have to be on the same "metal" (physical planes) as the miles you're using. So with AA, you can only upgrade as far as you're flying with AA. But even then actual upgrades are not that often available in practice (especially if you have no status, and thus are last in line when there is competition for upgrades).

If you want to fly in a higher-up class, either buy it outright or use miles for it outright. (I'm flying LAX-DOH-JNB on Qatar [QR] in business class early next year, booked months ago with 150k AA miles round trip. With QR business class, only Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu departures (from either USA or South Africa) seemed to ever be available for award redemptions, so while i had first planned a weekend-to-weekend trip, I changed it to a midweek-to-midweek trip after I saw that award availability pattern.

I went the simular process and problems a few weeks back with tying to do a class of service upgrade.

What i have found out is that each agent will tell you differently. Why? Well it is because they do not want to help with the leg work yo do so.

Finally an agent told me. You need to book an upgradable fair with aa ba or ib. Meaning full fair. Y W etc. But when booking that more expencive fair be careful. Upgrades are subject to availability. But fyi AA has a 24 hr cancelation window for metal holders.

My bookings AA bos-dub swu. Return dub-bos on BA 1st with miles.. fair was $480 agravation wasnt worth it.

Hope this helps