No More Guesswork: American Airlines Introduces Dynamic Instant Upgrades with Miles

American Airlines is changing the way AAdvantage members can upgrade their ticketed reservations by introducing the ability to confirm upgrades instantly using miles. American has been offering instant cash upgrades for some time now, but that option has not been available to those looking to use their miles to upgrade.

Now, all ticketed reservations will be presented with both a cash offer and a miles offer to upgrade the ticket into a higher cabin class. These changes are effective immediately and are now in place as of the time of writing.

Photo: Courtesy of American Airlines

As a result, American is eliminating its fixed upgrade award chart, which previously let customers know the cost in miles to upgrade their ticket, depending on cabin class and travel region. In the context of this chart, as long as upgrade award space is available, customers can request to upgrade their tickets according to the prices reflected on the chart.

Historically, the chart has offered some pretty good value: flights within the contiguous 48 U.S. States, Alaska, and Canada could be upgraded for as little as 5,000 AAdvantage miles, and economy flights between North America and Europe could be upgraded up to business class for just 25,000 miles + $350.

Chart: Courtesy of American Airlines

However, the downside to the fixed chart has always been capacity controls, with upgrade award space oftentimes being hard to come by. Furthermore, customers looking to upgrade would have to call into American’s reservation center to request the upgrade. This all changes now that customers are able to use miles to instantly confirm upgrades whenever there is seat availability, and they can now do so online.

While the good news is that upgrades as a whole will now be more accessible, the downside is that the dynamic pricing of these awards is going to result in less value to be had for your miles when it comes to redeeming them. Early pricing data points suggest that most instant upgrade offers are yielding about 1 cent per mile, which is not a great return for an award currency that can otherwise consistently yield upwards of 1.5 cents per mile.

Photo: Courtesy of American Airlines

While instant upgrade rewards are currently being offered on all ticketed reservations, upgrade requests using the fixed award chart can still be made up until August 11, after which all upgrade awards with miles will be priced dynamically. American will continue to process all current waitlist requests and honor all confirmed mileage upgrades that were made with the chart. These changes only apply to those looking to upgrade with miles and will not affect American’s systemwide upgrade awards.

Overall, this will not be welcome news for those who look to maximize the value of their redemptions, although the silver lining here is that upgrades using miles as a whole are now becoming more widely accessible.

This move by American follows suit with the industry trend of dynamically pricing as many award redemptions as possible. Fixed award charts are becoming increasingly rarer as airlines look to maximize the monetary recovery of their valuable mileage currencies. These changes follow a similar move made by United Airlines last month, which also eliminated its fixed mileage upgrade award chart in favor of dynamically pricing those upgrades.