Airline Workers: Top Upgrade Tips Please

Sam_Bee

donny_osmonds_mad_fan wrote: »

wayne if you want to get it as cheap as poss and want a bargain (dont we all) then the best price will no doubt be on the day,

Of course, don't do this if you have to have an upgrade. It could be full.

wayne77

Thanks guys,just the kind of advice I was looking.

WiseInvestor_2

loopy25 wrote: »

Just wanted to say that on 75% of the flights I do I have to move people to exit rows. So I would say if you fly with Virgin you'd have a very good chance of getting moved to an exit row.

I suspect this could be partly due to airlines' [relatively new] self-check-in option whereby Groundstaff no longer get the chance to vet those suitable to sit in Emergency Exit rows.

For info: Passengers must be adult, fully able-bodied and fluent in the language of the airline to understand detailed instructions from the crew. Ideally, passengers should be young, single males - capable of manhandling a heavy door without practice and who aren't seeking to put the welfare of wife & children above the need to help others during an evacuation

Your airline may leave it to the crew onboard to select suitable candidates which could be why you need to do so on most of your flights. The point I was hoping to make (albeit badly) for the wider topic was if Martin is hoping to compile an article about upgrades, he needs to be extremely careful to separate fact from common practice from fiction. It may seem like I'm splitting hairs (for which I apologise) but it's not necessarily a requirement to have any passengers sat in an emergency exit row before the 'plane can take-off, although I fully accept that is your common practice. For example, consider a flight with a light passenger load; the aircraft manufacturer and the aircraft operator must demonstrate that every passenger must be able to disembark using 50% of the available slides within 90 seconds. If you had 100 passengers on an A340-600 (10 doors) there would be no legal requirement to have passengers spread evenly throughout the aircraft - do you routinely upgrade passengers into a quiet/empty Upper Class cabin simply so they could evacuate via Doors 1? Similarly, it's perfectly legal to depart with one or more exits unserviceable where it clearly wouldn't make sense to move people into those rows.

Again, much of the discussion on this thread is aged, anecdotal and at best airline specific which makes Martin's job an impossible task. On previous threads I too have questioned the morality of 'blagging' free upgrades - after all, this website is all about saving money rather than attempting to get something you aren't otherwise willing to pay for. Martin kindly pointed out that if airlines choose to upgrade anyone, it might as well be a MSEr which is a fair point so I'm happy to help/contribute wherever possible.

I think we're all agreed that the only way to guarantee a better seat is to pay for it as airlines aren't in the business of giving away anything for free. On that note, I'd like to correct a previous post where I suggested that 10 airlines have gone bust this year in what is clearly unprecedented times in the industry; my latest count has already reached 24

basill

Not an upgrade for free but when booking air Jamaica to Montego Bay, Opodo`s website had an option to upgrade to premium class at the time of booking, this turned out to be a pretty good bargain, we ended up in AJ`s business class for several hundred pounds each less than it would have cost had we booked direct on the airlines website.

It was a very comfy trip!

B

_Andy_

WiseInvestor wrote: »

I suspect this could be partly due to airlines' [relatively new] self-check-in option whereby Groundstaff no longer get the chance to vet those suitable to sit in Emergency Exit rows.

Also VS's policy is to charge for exit row seats in economy - £50 per sector for shorter journeys (e.g. JFK), £75 for longer (e.g. SFO). Often they don't have the passengers willing to pay for them hence the seats are free at the time of departure.

JessicaF_2

I am a FF with American Airlines and have been fairly lucky with getting op upgrades.

I tend to travel a lot at peak times, so flights are busy and so I have been op upgraded economy to business a few times. I certainly wouldn't rely on it or expect it, but it does seem that AA work by considering FF status as it has happened more frequently as gold then platinum members than regular.

That said, a lot of times I fly business class either by paying, using miles or miles+copay and these are the best ways to guarantee an upgrade. It actually doesn't take long to accumulate miles.

I hear a lot of people saying dress smart etc...but I always dress comfortable for travel and my OH normally travels in Jeans/T-shirt and we have still received the upgrade.

I do often see AA selling upgrades on day of departure. I think last time they were offering Economy to Business for £250 on LHR-ORD flights, which was a bargain.

Jess

IndiasDad_2

I recently needed to fly Business Class directly from London to Orlando. The BA price for the return fare was £4733.

After some checking on the BA Executive Club website I found out that I could buy a BA Economy Plus fare for £1779 and then I could buy most of the airmiles I needed to upgrade the Economy Plus seat to a Club World seat for just £127. (I used a few of my own airmiles).

Therefore I 'bought' a £4733 ticket for just £1906, a saving of a massive £2827. All completely legitimate.

This almost seems too good to be true, but I can assure you it worked.

I understand there are restrictions on how many airmiles you can buy, however the whole concept of buying airmiles to upgrade a flight seems remarkably cost effective.

richardw

IndiasDad wrote: »

Therefore I 'bought' a £4733 ticket for just £1906

What were the differences in booking class and flexibility of the tickets?

IndiasDad_2

No differences. I just checked with BA and the flexibility is based on the class of ticket you choose to upgrade with BA miles. Because I upgraded a fully flexible full fare Economy Plus ticket, that same flexibility applies to the Club World ticket.

NB. The ticket agent at BA just confirmed that this was an 'extremely cost effective' way of upgrading to Club World

JessicaF_2

IndiasDad wrote: »

No differences. I just checked with BA and the flexibility is based on the class of ticket you choose to upgrade with BA miles. Because I upgraded a fully flexible full fare Economy Plus ticket, that same flexibility applies to the Club World ticket.

NB. The ticket agent at BA just confirmed that this was an 'extremely cost effective' way of upgrading to Club World

I forgot to mention this in my last post, you can do this on American Airlines as well.

If you buy full fare economy - it is only 10,000 miles (around £125 to buy) to upgrade to business class. Also get the advantages of a fully flexible ticket.
Works out far cheaper than business class itself.

However, limitations are that you can only buy 40,000 miles per year on AA. Also, there isn't always upgrade availability so you would need to check that first (using something like expert flyer where you can see how many upgrades are left on a particular flight).

One return flight will get you most of the miles back, more if you are a FF member.

TG