How To Upgrade With American Airlines AAdvantage Miles

---

TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.

Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission which helps contribute to the running of the site – I’m very grateful to anyone who uses these links but their use is entirely optional. The compensation does not impact how and where products appear on this site and does not impact reviews that are published.

On of the few things that American Airlines has left untouched (so far!) amongst all the AAdvantage changes are the Mileage Upgrades. We’ve seen the number of miles that we need to book award travel increase significantly, we’ve seen the number of miles we earn for travel plummet and we’ve seen American Airlines introduce minimum spend criteria for elite status…but the number of miles you need to upgrade your flights has, miraculously, remained unchanged.

Upgrading Domestic Tickets With AAdvantage Miles

What Fares Can Be Upgraded?

If you’re wondering what domestic flights you can upgrade with miles, this is the key phrase you need to know:

AAdvantage Miles can be used to upgrade flights that are both marketed and operated by American Airlines to the next cabin of service.

That means that, to upgrade a domestic flight using AAdvantage Miles your flight must be:

• Sold as an American Airlines flight number and
• Taken on an American Airlines aircraft

You can also only upgrade to the next cabin of service which means that, on 3-class aircraft, you cannot upgrade from Economy Class to First Class….you can only move up to Business Class.

According to American Airlines, excluding award tickets, the following fare classes are eligible for mileage upgrades:

• Discount Economy with published fares booked in H,K,M,L,W,V,G,Q,N,O,S and Military or Government fares booked in Y or B
• Full-Fare Economy with published fares booked in Y or B
• Discount Business with published fares booked in I
• Full-Fare Business with published fares booked in J, D or R

If you’re not sure what fare class you’ve booked (or are planing on booking) on American Airlines then take a look at this guide I wrote last year.

How Many Miles Do You Need?

The number of miles you need to upgrade will depend on what fare class you’re booked into and, the cheaper fare classes, will be subject to a co-pay as well as a mileage charge.

Here’s the American Airlines Domestic Upgrade Chart (click to enlarge):

Prices are based on a single one-way trip with up to a maximum of 3 segments.

So, as an example:

If you’ve booked a ticket with fare class/code “O” (a discount economy fare) you will need 15,000 AAdvantage Miles and $175 to upgrade your flight to the next cabin of service if you’re flying from the continental US, Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean to Hawaii.

Finding Upgrade Space

Just because American Airlines is prepared to sell a ticket in the cabin above the one you’re flying in doesn’t mean that upgrades are available. Unlike a few other airlines (British Airways) American Airlines upgrade inventory is kept separate from regular seat inventory.

American Airlines uses the following Fare Codes for its upgrades:

• First Class Upgrade: Fare Class/Code “A”
• Business Class Upgrade: Fare Class/Code “C”

Searching for upgrades from Economy Class to First class on 2-cabin domestic flights is easy.

1. Log in to your American Airlines account
2. Search for the flight you’re hoping to book (or have already booked) as if you were looking to book a regular ticket

If an upgrade is available for your flight you’ll see “systemwide upgrade” under the flight number in the search results:

If upgrade availability is there you can now call up American Airlines to get your ticket upgraded (or, if you haven’t booked your flight yet, book it online and then call up to get an upgrade).

Finding upgrade space on American’s domestic 3-cabin aircraft isn’t quite so easy as the airline’s website can’t handle that functionality just yet – if you see “systemwide upgrade” on a 3 cabin flight it can mean that upgrades are available from Economy to Business or Business to First…there’s no way to distinguish between the two on the website.

You either need to call up the reservations line to find out if upgrades are available on the flights you’re interested in or you can use a paid for service like Expert Flyer which allows you to search for upgrades very easily:

Upgrading International Tickets With AAdvantage Miles

Upgrading American Airlines marketed and operated flights:

Upgrades on American Airlines international tickets work in a very similar way to domestic upgrades except for a couple of small differences.

American Airlines has higher co-pays for some international upgrades (click to enlarge):

There may also be additional taxes and fees to pay (on top of those that are already included in your original fare) if you’re moving up from Economy Class to a premium cabin – flights out of the UK are a very good example of this.

All the other rules mentioned in the section on domestic upgrades still apply here:

• You can only upgrade to the next cabin of service
• You can’t upgrade award tickets

And you can search for upgrades in the same way as described earlier. If you’re upgrading from Business to First Class then the American Airlines website may be of help but, otherwise, you’re better off calling the airline or using ExpertFlyer to search for availability.

Upgrading British Airways & Iberia operated flights marketed by American Airlines

American Airlines will happily sell you flights on its partner airlines and, as long as you purchase tickets on those airlines through American, you can upgrade those flights with AAdvantage Miles….but there are quite a few restrictions.

Here’s the American Airlines upgrade chart for upgrades on British Airways and Iberia (click to enlarge):

The main thing that you should notice is that only full-fare Economy of full fare Premium Economy tickets can be upgraded with AAdvantage miles….and this makes the upgrades very expensive.

Specifically, these are the fare classes/codes that can be upgraded:

• Full-Fare Economy with published fares booked in Y or B (excluding Military or Government fares)
• Premium Economy with published World Traveller Plus fares booked in W on British Airways
• Full-Fare Business with published fares booked in J, D or R on American and C, J, D or R on British Airways

Unlike on American Airlines, if British Airways or Iberia are showing award availability on their respective websites for the cabin you wish to upgrade into then upgrades are available too. Upgrades and award tickets come from the same inventory on these airlines.

In the case of the flights below…..

…if you had booked a Premium Economy (World Traveller Plus) ticket, in fare class W, you would be able to upgrade these flights to Business Class for 12,500 AAdvantage Miles.

You can search for availability on British Airways and Iberia’s websites but you would need to call up American Airlines to get your flight upgraded – American is the airline issuing the ticket.

That should be all the information you need if you wish to upgrade flights with American Airlines AAdvantage Miles but look out for a post that will be coming up in the next few days that will explain how you can waitlist an upgrade (for when upgrades are not available on your chosen flights).

Note: American Airlines will be introducing Premium Economy to its international fleet sometime towards the end of 2016 and will be introducing Premium Economy to its domestic fleet at some point in 2017. It is expected that Premium Economy will count as a separate cabin on routes where it is present and will therefore prevent upgrades from Economy to Business Class (on 3-cabin flights) or Economy to First Class (on 2-cabin flights) – I’ll publish more information on this as and when American makes any announcements.