A New Way to Upgrade: American Airlines Rolls Out oneworld Upgrades in 2024
Two weeks ago American Airlines detailed changes coming for the AAdvantage program in 2024. One of those changes was ‘upgrades on select partner airlines’.
While Star Alliance (United, Air Canada, Lufthansa and others) has had an upgrade product that allowed members to use their miles for upgrades across member airlines, American’s oneworld and Delta’s SkyTeam haven’t had this.
American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER Business Class
While American declined to offer any details of the new option for upgrades on partner airlines, I wrote that I expected this to be the long-delayed oneworld alliance upgrade program.
And, indeed, oneworld says that alliance upgrades will finally launch this year. According to oneworld’s Vice President of Customer Experience, “I expect that we will announce something later this year. We are working through (the timeline) at the moment.”
- At launch “only a handful” of airlines will participate. We know that American Airlines will be one of them. The alliance is now based at American’s headquarters in Dallas.
- It isn’t likely to be a consistent product across airlines, with the alliance just “provid[ing] the framework and the infrastructure” while “the airlines will decide of how they want to do it” on a largely bilateral basis as is the case for award pricing today.
British Airways Club Suite
The keys here are going to be:
- what fare you’re required to buy to upgrade a paid ticket (whether a full fare is necessary, or discount tickets can be upgraded)
- how many points will be required
- what inventory is made available (how likely you are to be able to upgrade)
- when upgrades will clear (at time of booking if available, or only closer to departure)
Cathay Pacific Business Class
American and Alaska have among the best reciprocal upgrades in the world, allowing upgrades on a nearly reciprocal basis where American elites can upgrade on Alaska flights on a similar basis to Alaska’s own elites and vice versa and where Alaska top elites have been provided with confirmed upgrade instruments for some American flights.
Even there it’s not perfect. For instance, Alaska Airlines members haven’t had the ability to spend miles to upgrade on American, and American’s members haven’t been able to confirm upgrades in advance on Alaska.
Usually upgrades on partner airlines have required buying full fare tickets, making them only of very limited use. And in some cases it hasn’t been possible to confirm even those upgrades at time of booking, with some airlines restricting availability until for instance within 30 days of travel. Since some airlines don’t allow upgrades more than a few days in advance, even participating in a product like this would require rethinking their upgrade philosophy.
The bar for alliance upgrades to meet and exceed world standard is excruciatingly low, so hopefully this product won’t disappoint.
