American Airlines is changing how upgrades with miles work. Unfortunately, based on our first look, this appears to be a devaluation in most instances.
Similar to what United announced a few weeks ago for its program, the American Airlines mileage upgrade award chart is also going away.
Instead, it’s being replaced with instant upgrades, already available for many reservations, that you can purchase when your itinerary is ticketed.
American has been offering cash upgrade offers for some time. Now, when you see the offer, it will also have a price in miles.
You will still be able to use the award charts to upgrade, according to the AA.com website, until Aug. 11. That award chart had been a potentially good way to upgrade flights for as few as 5,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles.
“With the launch of Instant Upgrade with miles, new requests using the mileage upgrade award chart will no longer be accepted starting August 12, 2025, at midnight CT,” American said on its website.
Related: How much should you pay for a first-class upgrade
While it’s nice to be able to upgrade instantly using miles, we are seeing values of approximately a cent per mile … very similar to the value you’ll get to purchase upgrades on Delta Air Lines with Delta SkyMiles. Our calculations show that Delta upgrades generally sell for about 1.07 cents per mile.
On that upcoming flight to Chicago, I can upgrade my trip for $291 or 27,100 AAdvantage miles, which is not a great return for American AAdvantage miles.
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New upgrade offer on flight to Chicago. AA.COM
TPG’s Nick Ewen got an upgrade offer of $76 or 7,100 miles on an upcoming flight. Again, not a great value per redeemed mile given that TPG values American’s miles at 1.5 cents each as of June 2025 valuations.
The good news is that these changes don’t impact systemwide upgrade awards. You’ll still be able to use a systemwide upgrade to change a paid fare to the next class of service (or even two classes on some itineraries) one-way for up to three segments.
Bottom line
For those who want to squeeze maximum value from their AAdvantage miles to get in a better seat, this is going to be a tough pill to swallow.
It’s especially painful if you are used to using your American miles for relatively cheap mileage upgrades on international flights. Personally, I’ve been able to use as few as 25,000 AA miles and a $350 cash co-pay to upgrade from economy to business class on flights to Europe, which won’t be possible after Aug. 11.
The Fort Worth-based airline didn’t respond to a request for comment, but this article will be updated if we get more details.
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