Questions and Answers

In 2016, I booked a business class round-trip award with AA miles on JAL SFO-HND for later this month. When I booked it, I got my full 10,000-mile Citi Platinum MC rebate for 2016.

Now I am considering upgrading to first when inventory becomes available. I know that I won’t be charged a fee to upgrade from business to first, just the extra miles. However, my question is: Will the upgrade trigger my 10% rebate on the 40,000 extra miles I spend? Or will it be treated as a fee-free cancel/redeposit, in which I forfeit last year’s 10,000-mile rebate and use up this year’s whole 10,000-mile rebate when the flight gets rebooked?

Thanks for the help!
Kevin

Excellent question. I, too, would love to know how this works out.

Kevin. My interpretation of the rules is any class change requires a reissue and therefore not only will last years 10% Citi card bonus get cancelled and replaced by this years credit, you will have to pay the $150 fee unless you are an Explat.

I’ve upgraded class a few times with AA and never been charged any cash fees other than the additional mileage requirement. Also curious to see how the mileage plays out.

[USER=79]@Gaurav[/USER] Well it must be Alzheimer’s as I can’t blame it on jet lag. I’ve changed class myself back in 2015.

But having said that, the rules state otherwise depending on how you interpret the word “award type”. Is “type” Anytime vs Saver? Is it Business vs First? I can’t find the definition of “Award Type” anywhere in the terms and conditions. They don’t say service class. Good thing I’m not an AA agent otherwise I would have charged you! 🙂 Sorry for the $150 scare Kevin.

So I went to look up on AA.com how they handled my change and the history only goes back to 1/1/2016. I do have 2 emails from AA, one showing a deduction for the business class ticket and one showing a deduction for the first class ticket. So they must do a redeposit That would indicate the 10% from last year gets voided, but I guess we’ll see.

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Thanks for the forensic analysis! Hmm, this definitely makes me think twice about upgrading. I was hoping to save 4,000 miles on the upgrade and instead it looks like I would lose 10,000 miles on rebates I would’ve gotten later in the year. If anyone has had the experience of not forfeiting the rebate, please let me know. And thanks to everyone for chiming in!