Upgrade EK - Business Class

MasterPoo

Emirates would charge me £100 per person to cancel/refund, which I really don't mind.

DTDfanBoy

Well if Emirates will allow you to cancel your current tickets for £100, you're probably not comparing like for like, fully flexible tickets generally cost a fair bit more than non changeable.

MasterPoo

DTDfanBoy wrote: »

Well if Emirates will allow you to cancel your current tickets for £100, you're probably not comparing like for like, fully flexible tickets generally cost a fair bit more than non changeable.

Ok, but I am still unable to upgrade with the price quoted by Google flights, I just wanted to do a paid upgrade to Business Class and wanted advice on how best to go about it as the price on Google flights and the price quoted by EK and Qantas is so high compared to the Google flights price. I'm sorry I don't understand your comment?

DTDfanBoy

MasterPoo wrote: »

Ok, but I am still unable to upgrade with the price quoted by Google flights, I just wanted to do a paid upgrade to Business Class and wanted advice on how best to go about it as the price on Google flights and the price quoted by EK and Qantas is so high compared to the Google flights price. I'm sorry I don't understand your comment?

I saying that it is highly unlikely that the business class flights quoted by Google flights are fully flexible as your economy tickets appear to be.

A fully flexible business fare will always cost a lot more than one which is non changeable.

While the airlines usually only offer three or four classes of service, economy, first etc they all have loads of different fare classes, normally covering all the letters of the alphabet, Y is usually full fare economy, F = full fare First.

If you currently have a full fare economy ticket (Y), they'll be looking to upgrade you into full fare business normally J. HTH

SW17

OK, you're in the depths of airline pricing here. As you were told on flyertalk, this is a cancel/rebook if you want to change airports (do you have to, or was this just because you thought you found a cheap upgrade on Google Flights?).

As mentioned above, upgrade pricing is not always as simple as the difference between what you paid and a new price you find somewhere. You won't find "upgrade prices" on Google Flights, it's a new price for the whole itinerary. That said, if you are cancelling existing flights (with minimal penalty) and making a completely new booking, it should in theory be possible to get the price you found. Google Flights is, I assume, powered by ITA Matrix, which Google owns. ITA Matrix is showing your routing with Qantas flight numbers (but first 3 sectors operated by EK) at £1992 pp. A similar price is showing on ITA Matrix for EK flight numbers, but in and out of Gatwick, not Heathrow.

However, unable to get these prices to show online with Emirates, and Qantas says you have to call. You should be able to get this by calling them, but you've clearly had problems.

Try searching your itinerary at http://matrix.itasoftware.com

Narrow the timings as much as possible to what you want, as it produces a lot of options. When you see what you want, open up that fare and it will show the details of all the fare codes for the fare it found. You can quote these to the airline or a third party agent (Trailfinders, Flight Centre etc) to try and find the fare. You can't book on ITA Matrix.

Hope this helps.

MasterPoo

SW17 wrote: »

OK, you're in the depths of airline pricing here. As you were told on flyertalk, this is a cancel/rebook if you want to change airports (do you have to, or was this just because you thought you found a cheap upgrade on Google Flights?).

As mentioned above, upgrade pricing is not always as simple as the difference between what you paid and a new price you find somewhere. You won't find "upgrade prices" on Google Flights, it's a new price for the whole itinerary. That said, if you are cancelling existing flights (with minimal penalty) and making a completely new booking, it should in theory be possible to get the price you found. Google Flights is, I assume, powered by ITA Matrix, which Google owns. ITA Matrix is showing your routing with Qantas flight numbers (but first 3 sectors operated by EK) at £1992 pp. A similar price is showing on ITA Matrix for EK flight numbers, but in and out of Gatwick, not Heathrow.

However, unable to get these prices to show online with Emirates, and Qantas says you have to call. You should be able to get this by calling them, but you've clearly had problems.

Try searching your itinerary at http://matrix.itasoftware.com

Narrow the timings as much as possible to what you want, as it produces a lot of options. When you see what you want, open up that fare and it will show the details of all the fare codes for the fare it found. You can quote these to the airline or a third party agent (Trailfinders, Flight Centre etc) to try and find the fare. You can't book on ITA Matrix.

Hope this helps.

THANK YOU so very much. :T:T


I will report back.........

MasterPoo

I've finally decided what I'm going to do, based on the matrix link you very kindly provided SW17.


Upgrading to Business from LHR = £5974.38
Upgrading to Business from BHX = £6070.95 (Based on departing a Day Earlier)

There is a £96.57 difference between the two fares above, I might as well do the BHX and book an extra night in BKK, which isn't a bad idea at all.....now to try and get EK to give me that price!

I originally paid £2896.74 for Economy, so difference in price is £3174.21 and the additional room rate for extra night in BKK, butat least I will be flying Business Class!

DTDfanBoy

MasterPoo wrote: »

I've finally decided what I'm going to do, based on the matrix link you very kindly provided SW17.


Upgrading to Business from LHR = £5974.38
Upgrading to Business from BHX = £6070.95 (Based on departing a Day Earlier)

There is a £96.57 difference between the two fares above, I might as well do the BHX and book an extra night in BKK, which isn't a bad idea at all.....now to try and get EK to give me that price!

I originally paid £2896.74 for Economy, so difference in price is £3174.21 and the additional room rate for extra night in BKK, butat least I will be flying Business Class!

How are you arriving at those figures, what fare classes are you comparing, you need to specify a booking code to get anything close to meaningful out of the system.

And are those figures PP or for all three or you.

Full business fares for all of you on that routing will set you back £16k+ at the moment, so you're probably looking at around £12k to upgrade from Y

callum9999

DTDfanBoy wrote: »

How are you arriving at those figures, what fare classes are you comparing, you need to specify a booking code to get anything close to meaningful out of the system.

And are those figures PP or for all three or you.

Full business fares for all of you on that routing will set you back £16k+ at the moment, so you're probably looking at around £12k to upgrade from Y

Why do they need to be "full business" fares - are you not allowed to upgrade to discounted business on Emirates? I'm not aware of any airline that only lets you upgrade to a ticket with equivalent flexibility.

If the price Emirates are quoting is a lot higher than the difference in price the OP has found (on the assumption ITA is correct and it can be booked - always double check!) then they'll have to cancel the tickets (which appears to have a £200 charge each but will depend on the specific fare they have) and book the business class flights directly. The downside that that being they'll need to have money "spare" to pay for the business class tickets while they wait for the refund.

DTDfanBoy

callum9999 wrote: »

Why do they need to be "full business" fares - are you not allowed to upgrade to discounted business on Emirates? I'm not aware of any airline that only lets you upgrade to a ticket with equivalent flexibility.

If the price Emirates are quoting is a lot higher than the difference in price the OP has found (on the assumption ITA is correct and it can be booked - always double check!) then they'll have to cancel the tickets (which appears to have a £200 charge each but will depend on the specific fare they have) and book the business class flights directly. The downside that that being they'll need to have money "spare" to pay for the business class tickets while they wait for the refund.

They don't need to be full business class fares, but anyone looking to upgrade from a full economy fare will generally be given a price for full business unless they specify otherwise

I have no idea what fare class the OP has booked into, and seemingly neither do they, but there are plenty of fare rules out there that won't allow any changes so upgrading wouldn't even be an option.