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In early January 2024, American Airlines announced its AAdvantage® frequent flyer program changes for 2024. Among the advertised changes were mileage upgrades on partner airlines. We guessed that AA would roll out this redemption option on one of its closest partner airlines first. Sure enough, our crystal ball was right. American has now introduced mileage upgrade requests on Qantas flights.
Here's what we know so far about this just-introduced redemption option.
How to Use AAdvantage Miles to Upgrade on Qantas
Starting today, you can redeem AAdvantage miles to request an upgrade to a higher class of service on a Qantas-operated flight. Unfortunately, American Airlines has provided little transparency about how many AAdvantage miles this newest redemption option will cost.
Upgrades are processed by Plusgrade — an entity that facilitates paid upgrades on several different airlines. While paying cash to move forward on your next Qantas flight is still an option, AAdvantage members can also use miles to bid for the comforts of business or even first class.
However, as mentioned, there's little transparency outside of the terms and conditions. American publishes mileage upgrade charts for British Airways and Iberia but didn't roll one out for Qantas.
Instead, American processes its mileage upgrades through a dedicated Plusgrade webpage. On this page, you can enter your itinerary details, check for an offer, and request an upgrade.
Qantas upgrade priority
We reached out to American Airlines for more details about how mileage upgrade requests will be prioritized, especially compared with cash requests.
American Airlines confirmed that upgrade requests will be prioritized by AAdvantage elite status. Oneworld Emerald members (AAdvantage Executive Platinum and Platinum Pro) will be prioritized ahead of Oneworld Sapphire (AAdvantage Platinum) and Oneworld Ruby (AAdvantage Gold).
When it comes to miles vs. cash upgrades, American Airlines could only confirm that the “operating carrier determines how loyalty upgrades are prioritized against cash upgrades.”
Terms and conditions
The extensive FAQ page spells out how Qantas mileage upgrades work. Here's a distillation of the most important points:
- You can request an upgrade until 5 hours before departure for a domestic flight or 10 hours for an international one.
- Upgrade processing starts 24 hours before departure and continues until the 5 and 10-hour cutoffs.
- If Qantas operates your flight and you bought an eligible fare, you can request an upgrade.
- You'll earn AAdvantage miles based on the fare you originally booked.
- Upgrades will apply to all travelers on your itinerary. Either everyone will get cleared to upgrade, or nobody will.
- Upgrade requests are evaluated on a per-flight basis.
Example upgrade pricing
Checking around the AwardWallet team, not many of us are headed “down under” anytime soon. However, AwardWallet Editor-In-Chief is currently booked to fly Qantas premium economy from Sydney, Australia to Santiago, Chile this July — paying 70,000 AAdvantage miles for the one-way transpacific award.
Despite using AAdvantage miles to book this flight, he can request a mileage upgrade through this new option. When bidding cash, he's able to bid anywhere from $580 to $3,460 per passenger to move up to business class — with a $2,115 default bid:
However, when requesting an upgrade using AAdvantage miles, the only option is to bid 63,800 AAdvantage miles per person:
Since there's no indication of how “good” this bid is, we can't calculate an exact redemption rate. However, if we assume that a 63,800 AAdvantage mileage upgrade request is equivalent to the default $2,115 cash bid, this would provide a solid 3.3 cents per AAdvantage mile redemption rate.
With that said, if the AAdvantage mileage upgrade request is only as good as the $580 minimum bid, AAdvantage members would only get 0.91 cents per mile.
Related: When and How To Upgrade Paid Airline Tickets With Points and Miles
Final Thoughts
If you have American Airlines AAdvantage miles and booked a paid itinerary on Qantas, you can now redeem your miles to upgrade to a higher class of service. However, American Airlines hasn't published a table showing the cost of upgrading with miles.
Without data points, it's hard to say whether or not this is or isn't a good use of miles. If you've booked a Qantas itinerary and have an upgrade offer, let us know your offer in the comments.
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