American Airlines Going Upgrade Crazy

American Airlines 787 Business Class Seat

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Over the past few days quite a few blogs have been reporting on the sudden glut of award inventory that American Airlines has opened up on various routes. To American’s frequent flyers this is mana from heaven and is a bounty we haven’t seen for a very long time indeed.

But that’s a subject that I’ve seen covered a lot elsewhere so that’s not what I’m going to concentrate on in this post. What I’m more interested in is the upgrade availability that American has also opened up.

Unlike airlines like British Airways, American Airlines has separate fare codes for upgrades and award tickets. This means that, on British Airways, if you can see that an award ticket is available you know that an upgrade to that class is available too. On American there’s no such correlation. They’re completely separate.

This morning I woke up to an email from Expertflyer letting me know that an alert that I had set had been triggered:

expertflyer-upgrade-alert

This was an alert I was particularly happy to receive as I need 3 Economy to Business Class upgrades on the flight and, based on past history, I wasn’t feeling very confident of snagging them.

The first thing I did was to log in to Expertflyer to see if the upgrade(s) was still available – the email arrived in the middle of the night so it had been sitting in my inbox for a few hours.

Find Airline Award & Upgrade availability

Not only was the upgrade still available but, to my amazement, there were at least 7 upgrades available on the flight I needed. I took a quick look at my American Airlines account and could see that the upgrades were being processed so I called up the Executive Platinum desk to get the process completed and to select seats.

That’s when I decided to go back into Expertflyer to see what was going on with American Airlines upgrade inventory.

To say that the surprises kept coming would be an understatement!

Miami – London Upgrade Availability

Taking a random seven day period in October this is what the upgrade inventory looks like for the Miami to London route:

mia-lhr-upgrades-1

mia-lhr-upgrades-2

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mia-lhr-upgrades-7

That’s nothing short of incredible….and it’s unheard of. 

The system that feeds into Expertflyer cuts off at the number “7” so, where you see a “7”, it means that there are at least 7 upgrades, from Economy to Business Class, available on the flight.

Out of the 14 direct flights between Miami and London in that seven day period, 10 flights have at least 7 upgrades available. And 7 of those flights are operated by aircraft with the best Business Class seat between the US and Europe:

Airlines - American 777-300ER Business Class - 01American Airlines Business Class Seat 777-300ER

I started to wonder if this was just specific to the Miami to London route so I checked to see what upgrade availability was like for a route I know very well – Los Angeles to London. This is a very major route for American Airlines and upgrades have been getting harder and harder to confirm more than a few days before departure….so I wasn’t expecting to see much availability.

Boy was I wrong.

Los Angeles – London Upgrade Availability

On two random dates in October this is the upgrade availability:

lax-lhr-upgrades-4 lax-lhr-upgrades-6

Those weren’t freak results. I took a look around those dates and there was plenty more where that came from.

Next I wondered if it was just October that had the plentiful upgrade availability…so I checked May:

lax-lhr-upgrades-may-1 lax-lhr-upgrades-may-2

Ok, so there aren’t nearly as many upgrades available closer in but still…..

I can’t remember the last time I saw 3 upgrades available on a Los Angeles – London flight (let alone the 7+ that are available later in the year!).

So a busy route like Miami – London had great upgrade availability, a premium route like LAX – London also has great availability….but what about one of the ultra-premium routes?

Dallas – Hong Kong Upgrade Availability

The chances of upgrades on this route have been so low since the route began that there’s a dedicated thread about it on Flyertalk.

But here’s the upgrade availability for a random week in May:

dfw-hkg-upgrades-may-1

There’s not much else I can say! The numbers do all the talking for me.

Bottom Line

I have no idea what American Airlines is doing at the moment and I can’t believe that it will last…but make the most of it if you can.

The routes I’ve mentioned above are by no means all that’s available. Even the new LAX-Auckland route has plentiful upgrade availability.

American Airlines 787 Business Class SeatAmerican Airlines Business Class 787 – as seen on the LAX to Auckland route

If you don’t have enough miles for award travel perhaps you have enough miles to use for upgrades (but don’t forget that you’ll have a co-pay to pay as well).

If you already have a lot of travel booked and can’t make the most of the award availability that’s around right now (and you’re miles rich), then using miles for upgrades may be a good idea – especially on routes like Dallas – Hong Kong.

Amazingly, after I had made sure that my 3 upgrades had cleared and that the tickets had been reissued, I went back to check Expertflyer (10+ hours later) and there were still 7 upgrades showing as available…which means that American Airlines had released at least 10!

For the past 2-3 years American Airlines has gradually been reducing the number of premium awards they’ve been making available on their own flights as well as reducing the number of upgrades they’ve been making available in advance..but suddenly something has changed and changed drastically. I’m not going to ask too many questions…I’m just going to enjoy it while it lasts 🙂

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