AAdvantage-Qantas Upgrade

I would like to travel business class to Australia in August to visit my family. I have 140,000 miles on American Airlines, transferable to Qantas, but there are no seats available that month. Is it possible to purchase a discount ticket and use my miles to upgrade? If so, how would I do this?

Liz

Hi Liz,

Unfortunately, AAdvantage miles cannot be used to upgrade a Qantas flight. However, I did call American Airlines on June 30, 2004 and found out that awards seats are available in August for flights to Australia. The bad news is that there are not any awards seats from Australia until late September. Therefore, I suggest you try to secure one of the outbound dates and then call the marketing department at American Airlines and request that they open up a seat for your return flight. Be sure to stress your loyalty and ask them what good are the miles you earn if you can not use them.

Good luck,

Joel