Questions about booking with American Airlines

[D&D]

Later this year (Sept) I'm planning a trip to Nth America. I was looking at flying to HNL with Jetstar in Starclass then to New York with AA business/first. When checking the AA website I noticed they are offering 'instant upgrade' fares - i.e. business/first for the price of an economy ticket. When I selected the 'instant upgrade' option and checked the fare basis the code was 'Y26' whereas the code for fully flexible on the same flight is either A or F. My two questions are:

1. If I select the 'instant upgrade' option and the business/first cabin is full of higher paying passengers does that mean I'm likely to end up down the back without warning? I'm prepared to pay more if it means I'll be travelling in relative comfort but will take advantage of the cheaper fare if it means I'll receive the same product. I'm finding the fare rules for AA very, very confusing.

2. What's the difference between business and first on AA? Again I'm finding it difficult to find a clear explanation about the difference between these classes and am further confused by the seemingly random pricing relating to these fare types. In the case of HNL to New York, fully flexible business is more expensive than fully flexible first but I was under the impression that first was a superior product offering.

Any help would be greatly appreciated because I'm close to making a booking and don't feel very confident about booking with AA. Furthermore, flying with AA requires a change of planes whereas Continental has a direct flight with comparatively clear fare rules at a very reasonable price. Also, from their website I fully understand what Continental offer in their premium cabins on certain sectors compared to AA. The only downside is no SC or FF points.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[notzac]

1. If I select the 'instant upgrade' option and the business/first cabin is full of higher paying passengers does that mean I'm likely to end up down the back without warning? I'm prepared to pay more if it means I'll be travelling in relative comfort but will take advantage of the cheaper fare if it means I'll receive the same product. I'm finding the fare rules for AA very, very confusing.

To the best of my knowledge -- booking a Instant Upgrade (Y-UP) fare books you directly in to A or P and gives you a confirmed seating allocation in F or J (depending on how many classes are sold on the flight). The only reason you wouldn't end up the front is either: a) you're travelling on an all-Y flight (such as American Eagle), or b) you missed the flight or connection in some way, and they had no space for you up the front on the rebooked flight (in the case of a missed connection, not terribly likely as you would carry equal/better priority than those getting the freebie upgrades).

Any help would be greatly appreciated because I'm close to making a booking and don't feel very confident about booking with AA. Furthermore, flying with AA requires a change of planes whereas Continental has a direct flight with comparatively clear fare rules at a very reasonable price. Also, from their website I fully understand what Continental offer in their premium cabins on certain sectors compared to AA. The only downside is no SC or FF points.

No reason to not feel confident about booking with AA. You're right in saying that their service can be somewhat ordinary at times (then again, so can most American airlines), but I've never had any material problems that weren't fixed promptly.

[serfty]

When booking (if using the 'Price & Schedule' tool), click the "[+] Flight Details" link to the left of each option and it should show what booking class the flight books into.

e.g.

• for a $2208 HNL-SFO-JFK fare I see A and I classes - A is first class, I is Business class (both Discount)
• for a $1115 HNL-DFW-LGA fare, I see both segments in P class, this is discount first class.

Any booking completed will book into those classes as a 'revenue' booking. If you do not change flights that's the class/cabin you will travel in.

FWIW, if the cabin is full or getting there, you would not be able to book these discount fares anyway.

[D&D]

Thanks for your replies. Your help and expertise is appreciated.

[Dave Noble]

Any booking completed will book into thos classes as a 'revenue' booking. If you do not change flights that's the class/cabin you will travel in.

That is indeed the case in normal operations. In an irregular situation and you need, for example, to be rebooked onto another flight due to problems, then you may end up back in economy

Dave