Questions and Answers

Lucky,

I have a PE flight from ORD-HKG-ALK in 6 weeks. It is a CX ticket not an AA codeshare. I want to earn AA EQM & EQDs from this flight. Is there a way to try and upgrade to business using miles (either CX or AA)? If so does that risk your AA number being removed from the record and replaced with my Asia miles number?

Hi Marc,

You cannot use AA miles to upgrade a CX ticket – you would need to use your AsiaMiles account.

Anecdotally, using your AsiaMiles account to upgrade and switching back to your AA number should work; I tried to do the same, but it didn’t work out only because the upgrade (from CX J to F) didn’t clear (although F had open seats) so at the gate I switched it back to my AAdvantage #.

But you do run the risk of the either the upgrade not sticking (again, anecdotally I’ve heard of this happening on CX – but not on BA, where what you suggest almost always works with Avios) OR not getting the AA EQMs and EQDs and getting stuck with the AsiaMiles credit. I took the risk on that because I was only trying to upgrade HKG to PEK, and if I lost the EQDs for that short segment it wouldn’t matter (much).

Good luck – let us know if it works.