American Airlines Instant Cash + Mileage Upgrade Offers Explained: Worth It?

Airlines in the United States have gotten increasingly good at monetizing their premium cabins. They don’t want customers to rely on complimentary upgrades, but instead, they’re trying to condition customers to pay for upgrades, whether it’s with miles or cash.

In recent years, this trend has been especially obvious at American Airlines, as the airline will now pretty consistently sell you instant upgrades with either cash or miles, any time between when you book and when you travel.

In this post, I’d like to go over the details of how exactly this program works. The truth is that there’s a lot of variability, so everyone’s experience may be a bit different, but it’s at least worth understanding how it works.

American’s instant upgrade program details

There are a few ways to score an upgrade to an American Airlines premium cabin, ranging from taking advantage of complimentary elite upgrades, to using systemwide upgrades (in addition to just outright redeeming miles for first or business class). In this post, I’d like to focus on American’s instant upgrade program, whereby you can pay cash or miles to upgrade a flight.

Understandably there are a lot of questions about this — when and how can you upgrade, how much will it cost you, and is it worth it? Let’s discuss those points in a bit more detail.

When & where does American offer instant upgrades?

In most cases, American will have upgrade offers with cash or miles available anytime between when you book your ticket, up until a few hours before departure. This is not at all consistent, so in some cases you may not see an upgrade offer at all for a flight, while in other cases, you may see an upgrade offer on the same itinerary for months.

There are two ways you can see the upgrade offers available to you:

• You can log into the American Airlines app and open your itinerary; refresh the itinerary and then wait a few seconds, and you may see an upgrade offer pop up at the bottom of the screen, where it will say “Move to First/Business”
• You can log into your reservation on aa.com, and at the bottom of the screen you may see a section with upgrade offers; again, it can take a short while for an upgrade offer to populate, so you’ll want to keep the page open for a bit

Sometimes American will also email people upgrade offers, but it’s totally possible to have an upgrade offer available to you without getting an email.

Note that the initial pricing displayed is typically the lowest price for upgrading any segment of your itinerary. So if you have a multiple segment itinerary, you’ll have to click through to see the details of how much upgrading each segment would cost.

Should you use cash or miles for instant upgrades?

Before discussing the general value of American’s instant upgrade program, let me mention that you can always either pay for these upgrades with cash or miles. Personally, I’d almost never consider this to be a good use of AAdvantage miles.

That’s because when you compare the cash and mileage cost, you’re consistently getting under one cent of value per mile, which I’d consider to be a subpar use of miles (I value AAdvantage miles at 1.5 cents, for what it’s worth). Okay, maybe some people will still want to redeem that way (since they might be willing to part with miles, but not cash), but I’m just generally saying that it’s not the best way to maximize value.

I should mention that back in the day, you could also redeem AAdvantage miles for upgrades per a published award chart, which was subject to capacity controls, but often had more attractive pricing. That program is no longer available, and nowadays the only way to upgrade a flight with American miles is using the instant upgrade feature.

How expensive are American instant upgrades?

American Airlines’ instant upgrade prices with cash or miles are all over the place. It can vary wildly based on your elite status, the fare class you book, and when you look at the upgrade offer.

It’s possible that the upgrade cost for a particular flight will change significantly day-to-day, so don’t expect the pricing to be static. Furthermore, it’s possible that one person may see an upgrade offer for a particular flight, but another person won’t. A few things to note:

• In some cases, the upgrade price will be the difference between the fare you paid, and the fare for the premium cabin you’re trying to upgrade to
• In other cases, the upgrade price will represent a massive discount over the fare difference between the two cabins, even if you upgrade minutes after booking your ticket
• In other cases, the upgrade price will be more than the fare difference between the two cabins, so don’t ask me to explain how that happens
• Pricing does seem to be tied to elite status, how many seats are left for sale, and what fare classes are left for sale, so often upgrade prices will drop as more premium seats become available in lower fare buckets
• In some cases you’ll also see upgrade offers on fares that have already been upgraded; in other words, I’m talking about aircraft with a “proper” first class, where you upgrade from economy class to business class, and are then eligible for a paid upgrade to first class

I wish I could give some clearer guidance as to what pricing is like, but seriously, the variance is massive. A flight from Miami (MIA) to Tampa (TPA) might sometimes have upgrades for $40, and sometimes have upgrades for $400. It depends on so many factors, which is why everyone should analyze their own situation.

Do you earn miles & Loyalty Points for American paid upgrades?

If you pay cash for your instant upgrade on American Airlines, then you earn redeemable AAdvantage miles and earn Loyalty Points. You’ll be rewarded at the same rate that you are for purchasing tickets:

• AAdvantage non-elite members earn 5x AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points per dollar spent
• AAdvantage Gold members earn 7x AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points per dollar spent
• AAdvantage Platinum members earn 8x AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points per dollar spent
• AAdvantage Platinum Pro members earn 9x AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points per dollar spent
• AAdvantage Executive Platinum members earn 11x AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points per dollar spent

However, if you redeem miles for the upgrade, you wouldn’t be eligible for any additional rewards, unfortunately, making this an even worse value.

Are American instant upgrade offers refundable?

If you accept an instant upgrade with American Airlines, is that refundable? There are a few things to understand:

• If you cancel or change your trip, you can request a refund for the cash upgrade cost on aa.com, in the form of a trip credit for the value of your upgrade
• If you paid for bags or Mileage Multiplier, you can request a refund on aa.com for that
• If you paid for Main Cabin Extra or a Preferred seat on a segment you end up upgrading, you’ll automatically be refunded for that to the original form of payment
• If you used miles to upgrade and if you need to cancel, the miles will be redeposited to your account

Instant upgrades are part of my strategy with American

Living in Miami, American is the airline that I fly most often. For the most part, I no longer expect complimentary upgrades, so I do what I can to secure premium cabin travel in one way or another. To be clear, I don’t mind flying economy on short flights, or when traveling with our little kids. However, if I’m flying alone or just with Ford on a longer flight, I value being able to sit in first or business class, assuming the premium is reasonable.

With that in mind, I generally score premium cabin seats on American in one of two ways:

• Sometimes I just outright redeem miles for first or business class, assuming there’s saver level award space; more often than not, I even book through Alaska Atmos Rewards, as I find seats often open as the departure date approaches
• Otherwise I typically buy an instant upgrade, though I’m strategic, and wait until the price is low enough where I’m comfortable paying it

Everyone will of course value first and business class upgrades differently. In the past I’ve written how much I value first class, and how much of a premium I’m willing to pay for it. I try to stay within those guidelines, while also factoring in if I do have any sort of a real chance at scoring a complimentary upgrade.

This upgrade monetization is controversial with elites

While aggressively selling upgrades has very much become the norm in the airline industry, it’s worth acknowledging how this often rubs elite members the wrong way, and certainly draws into question the value of elite status.

As you’d expect, the whole paid upgrade concept leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many elite members. For example, many people work hard to earn AAdvantage Executive Platinum status, which is supposed to entitle you to space available upgrades starting 100 hours before departure.

Many elite members find that their upgrades aren’t clearing in advance, but instead they’re being offered cheap buy-up deals in the days prior to departure. As you’d expect, upgrades are a zero-sum game, and a particular plane only has so many premium seats.

So rather than offering elite members the space available upgrades that they hope for, airlines are instead doing what they can to get those people to buy upgrades instead. It of course makes one wonder why they should even bother being loyal, since upgrades are one of the main perks of elite status…

Bottom line

American Airlines has an instant upgrade program, whereby customers are targeted for cash and mileage upgrades after booking. Nowadays this is offered a vast majority of the time, and the pricing and availability of this varies significantly.

While being able to guarantee an upgrade could be a good deal, this is a double-edged sword, as it makes it tougher to score a complimentary upgrade.

What do you make of American’s instant upgrade program? How often do you take advantage of it?