How do upgrades to biz class work using AA miles? I've read the AA site and searched the Fodors site, but I am still confused as to how this works. I gather there is a charge in additon to the required miles? How do I know how many miles are needed to upgrade?Can it be done with their partner airlines also? I'm thinking of doing this for a trip from DC to Europe. Thanks for educating me!

Mileage upgrades between US-EUR are 25K miles plus $300 each way.

<i># Upgrade awards are only valid on individual published-fare tickets and are subject to capacity controls.
# The following fares are not upgradeable:

* Fares booked in I or O
* Fares booked in Q between North America and Asia, Europe, India or South America.

# Upgrade from most discount economy is an upgrade to the next class of service, from any eligible purchased discount economy ticket.</i>

<b>C</b> fare class has to be available on your flights between US-EUR to be confirmed at the time of the reservation. If C fare is not available, you will be put on a waitlist. Your waitlist can clear up to 1/2 hour before departure.

If you are coming back to US from UK be prepared to pay a &quot;luxury&quot; tax if your upgrade clears. The UK government is really trying to cash in on this. I'm not sure how much it is exactly but figure ~$100.

Here is some more info:

http://tinyurl.com/3dvy5d

And no, you cannot upgrade on partner flights using AA miles.

Thanks AA and Gardyloo! Very helpful and sounds like it may not be worth it for us to upgrade. (I wonder why I couldn't find all that on AA web site looking under upgrades...oh well.)

Not trying to confuse the issue, but you might want to look at discount all-business class carriers like MaxJet or Silverjet, depending on where you're going. Try valuing your miles at 2c each, then adding that (50K for the round trip) to the $600 in copays and the underlying coach fare, and do the math...

Thanks for the reminder on the low fare biz class carriers. I will look into them also.

For the last 2 years, we have upgraded our outbound portion on AA from DFW to FRA for 25k miles and $250 per person (raised to $300 this year). We definitely felt it was worth it. Our total airfare cost was under $1,000 per person round trip, and we felt so much more refreshed when we arrived in Frankfurt. We have already put out names on the waitlist for our trip in September.

bettyk, have u been waitlisted b4 and been upgraded? thanks

Every time. We usually find out that we've been upgraded about 10 days to 2 weeks before our departure.

Thanks -- that's encouraging

When upgrading AAFrequentFlyer and bettyk, do you do all your reservations/transactions by phone?

My husband and I had planned a trip to France for 4/07 and had to cancel due to a medical ER. Mid-June we want to rebook for 4/08. Originally we booked/paid for a first/biz ticket (first domestic, biz to CDG) and those tickets were refunded to us because we provided a doctor's note. Now I'm wondering about trying to use mileage for upgrading instead and save us some money.

I'm a novice at using mileage awards. Any tips appreciated on the &quot;how to's&quot; to ensure we get what we want.

Thanks

PatandHank:
I always call &amp; since I like to have confirmed flight dates to book where I want to stay, I'm flexible on my dates but always go mid-week which seems to be easier to get what I want.

I've always found the FF customer service reps to be exceptionally friendly &amp; helpful. I book as early as possible to get confirmed seats. It's nice to know about these waitlists but I'm not lucky &amp; figure I'd probably wouldn't get the upgrades.

Maybe it's not worth it for everyone to use miles this way, but it is to me even with the extra charge they tack on for the upgrades.

<i>Mid-June we want to rebook for 4/08.</i>

Using a paid seat-inventory service, I can see two or more &quot;C&quot; class (upgrade) seats available most days in early-mid April 2008 on American's JFK-CDG flights, and a fair number on their DFW-CDG flights. If you want to go the upgrade route for Paris in April (pretty popular destination) I wouldn't let grass grow under your tuckus.

As for the how-to, I'd cough up the phone res fee and try to get both the basic coach booking and the upgrade booking done at the same time, then focus on other aspects of the trip, knowing the air transportation portion is taken care of.

I have always booked the cheapest fare tickets online and then called the Travel Awards number later to get on the upgrade waitlist. They confirm which account to withdraw the miles from and make sure they have a credit card number on file.

Right now, there are still a lot of Biz Class seats available on our departure date but it's still 3 months away. I think tomorrow I'm going to call and get on the waitlist for our return flight as my DH has decided he'd like to fly back Biz Class too.

In all, if we get both upgrades our round trip flights will have only cost us $1300 per person plus 50k miles. Not bad in my opinion.

Thanks everybody for the input. Will see what we can do.