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I’ve blogged previously on how to upgrade your flights under the new business class regime, and so I was surprised to find out that some of my research wasn’t quite right. I’m currently booked on a 9+ hour flight from Chicago to Rome in early August. The nice folks at Carlson Wagonlit went ahead and ticketed the flight so I could request an upgrade from American Airlines. I knew I was ticketed in YCA, and was stupid to assume that that fare was “full fare.” After looking at their website, I thought I’d be out 20-30k miles for the upgrade. Turns out I’d be out 50k + $600 (termed a “copay”) for two tickets, as YCA counts as “discounted economy class” as far as upgrades are concerned. Assuming a value of ~ $.02 per airline mile, the upgrade would set me back $1600, 4x more than the $400 I was expecting to pay. That said, it’s still cheaper than cost constructing, as the difference between a YCA fare and a regular Y fare is running ~$2400 for two tickets. Plus, if you flush with miles, the $300 copay might not seem all that bad.
Tags: contract fares, frequent flyer
One Response to “Y is full fare, YCA is not on AA”
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July 29th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Well, to post a success story: following advice from this blog, I was able to upgrade a flight from DC to Atlanta, and more importantly, the 14 hour segment from Atlanta to Dubai on Delta for 25,000 miles and, thankfully, no “co-pay”. Luckily, I had some flexibility in travel dates. Before booking the ticket with Carlson Wagonlit, I called Delta and asked for the dates for which they had upgrades available: they only had a few- July 6, July 30th, and August 8th. July 30th was close enough, and after I was ticketed the upgrade was as easy as a 2 minute phone call to Delta. Unfortunately, I only had 25,090 miles to begin with - the lion’s share from opening a Delta AE credit card - so I may have to suck up my next flight in the back of the plane.