Questions and Answers

Well, the good news is I snagged 2 $570 R/T tickets for July from ATL-FRA yesterday through BA. The bad news is that the return is on AA with the long segment (FRA-DFW) on the newly configured economy torture chamber 777-200. I have no status with AA (haven’t flown them in many years) and they just told me that this flight is not even eligible for me to upgrade with miles (which I would transfer in from SPG or just buy) because I booked through BA. Is that really true or did I get a bad agent? If we’re truly stuck, any advice on whether I should suck it up and pay $150pp for MCE. $86 for a regular aisle seat or wait it out as there appear to be many seats available (just not free except middle seats)? Normally, the cost wouldn’t bother me much, but the low cost of the tickets makes me want to save even more $$. Thanks in advance for any advice or your experience with this AA configuration.

I think that to do mileage upgrades on BA issued tickets, it needs to be a full fare economy ticket, so that might be the issue.

I’ve had luck not assigning a seat and waiting until closer to departure and selecting a free aisle seat (albeit further back) since more seats tend to open up then.

Otherwise, there is merit to paying for MCE and/or preferred seats.

Thanks David. I think you are right about the BA tickets. I’ll wait a month or so and see how the seats open up. I suspect AA holds some seats back to get folks to pay for the preferred seats – shocking I know!

If you pay for MCE and also request an upgrade (if it ends up being allowed?), AA is pretty quick about refunding in full whatever you paid for MCE….

I just called back and the explanation was that because I bought the ticket thru BA, there is no way to upgrade using AA miles. BA controls whether I can upgrade, even on AA metal.

Do you have Avios or a way of getting Avios? If you do, you might be able to do an Avios upgrade, depending on your ticketed fare class – [URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/09/20/upgrade-british-airways-avios/[/URL]

Ha ha. The round trip fare basis for the ticket was $133. BA said not upgradeable. We’ll just suck it up and think of the savings while being slowly crushed to death.

I’d definitely spring for an exit row.