Old Mar 9, 2015, 6:33 am
FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides
Last edit by: Gnopps
*** MOD NOTE: Please do not remove ***

A friendly reminder that Flyertalk is not a marketplace, and nothing may be offered (or solicited) for sale or barter within the general forums - which includes offering vouchers for free. For those with sufficient posts and length of membership, trading/exchange is allowed solely within Coupon Connection, and then only in accordance with the specific rules of that forum.

Please do not attempt to solicit, sell or trade upgrade vouchers within this forum. Posts will be deleted and the members concerned potentially subject to disciplinary action. **Please note that this includes directly using the PM system to do so without first posting in Coupon Connection**. Thanks for your co-operation.
A3 provides all Gold members with four vouchers for upgrade from Economy to Business. Silver members get two upgrade vouchers.

Criteria
  • You must be travelling on A3 or OA metal - codeshares are not included.
  • The original ticket must be issued on either A3 (390) or OA (050) ticket stock.
  • Only revenue (paid) tickets, in fare classes other than U, P & T on a GoLight fare basis, can be upgraded, but not redemption tickets.
  • All flights on the ticket must be on A3 or OA metal.
  • There must be award availability in I-class for the upgrades to clear. You can check this by logging in to M&B then going to https://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbon...t/spend-miles/ The results page will initially be a calendar. To see Business availability, you have to click through to the next step. (You can also use a free or paid tool such as ANA website, UA website (looking for saver award space), Aeroplan, AwardNexus or ExpertFlyer to check for availability.)
  • One coupon per person per journey leg is required - so, for example, TXL-ATH-SKG and return via the same route would require four coupons per person.
  • Anyone can be upgraded using the coupons - you do not have to be travelling on the same booking or even the same plane.

Procedure
  • Call A3 to request the upgrade. The phone numbers are listed at https://aegeanairlines.custhelp.com/ (most of them should go to the same call centre in Greece).
  • If successful, a new ticket will be issued (with a new number). The PNR will remain unchanged.
  • You are liable for any extra taxes applicable to Business Class (e.g. APD from the UK). Sometimes this gets charged, sometimes it doesn't - if it's due and you're not charged because the agent forgets, you've just been lucky.
  • If there's no immediate I-class availability, you can ask to be waitlisted for upgrade. The ability to waitlist was reported to have been removed in August 2016, but was again possible in September. Check with the agent - option available on May 2018.
    • in case you requested to be waitlisted for upgrade and want to check if the customer care agent made the changes on your booking you can check the reservation on checkmytrip.com (click here), the leg you requested the upgrade will be shown here as Waitlisted.
  • If you wish to upgrade one segment of a multi-segment trip (e.g. XXX-ATH-YYY) and there is availability on the leg you wish to upgrade, you may still have to be waitlisted due to married segment issues. The process of clearing the waitlist is somewhat confusing and may result in frustration due to the availability seeming to disappear but in reality, this may mean that the segments have been "unmarried" and the availability has been allocated to your reservation. See post 2272 and the update in post 2294 for more details.

Benefits
  • No matter what the fare basis of the original ticket, you receive full Business Class benefits after upgrade.
  • This includes lounge access (useful if you're upgrading someone other than yourself who has no status, or if you've run out of Silver lounge vouchers) and full baggage allowance (it applies for first leg as well, in case you are upgraded only on the 2nd leg of your trip - confirmed on the etix).
  • Because the ticket books as a redemption, the free car hire is not included.

Mileage/segment earning
  • You will earn at the underlying rate of your purchased ticket in economy, not at a business class rate. Because status miles are awarded, this also counts as a segment for re-qualification purposes.
  • The flights may credit automatically, but may take longer to credit than tickets that have not been changed. They may also credit as 0 miles, and later change to the correct rate. If the flights have not credited properly after a few weeks then calling A3 will rectify this rapidly.

Expiry
  • The vouchers expire at the end of your membership year - they do not carry over, even if status is retained. A new set is issued every year.
  • It is the date when you use the voucher that matters. It can upgrade a flight that takes place after expiry as long as you apply the voucher before.
  • On upgrade from Silver to Gold, any remaining Silver upgrade coupons expire, but they are replaced by four Gold ones which expire at the end of the Gold membership year.

BEWARE
  • Once you have upgraded your seat, your ticket will be reissued. Suddenly, this ticket may be VERY expensive to change. If, for instance, you later decide to travel on a different date, you will probably be required to rebook into Business, even if Economy was available for new bookings. A3 will charge you the difference from your original Economy fare to a NEW Business fare. Plus fees, taxes and whatnot. Update 18/08/2021: this appears to no longer be the case, as an upgraded ticket was changed and the underlying Economy fare was used for the upgraded segments. The coupon was "removed" from the old dates and "reapplied" to the new dates.
  • Coupons will not be returned/reinstated. Once a coupon is applied, it is gone for good (the T&Cs printed on the coupons allow for date and time changes, but not route changes).
  • If you want to provide your coupons to upgrade a friend's travel, it is advisable to call in yourself. Your friend can call in if they know your name, birthdate, M&B-number and the email address associated with your account. That means: Anyone who knows these particulars can use your coupons without your knowledge. They do NOT need the coupon numbers.
  • Crediting upgraded segments to another program will likely fail, as it will be reported as I-class. It may be possible to retro-claim the miles.
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Seat upgrade coupons

Old Apr 25, 2015, 3:21 am
  #451  
Moderator, Finnair
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: MMX (CPH)
Programs: Eurobonus Diamond, QR Platinum, AY+ Platinum, A3*G, Nordic Choice Lifetime Platinum, SJ Prio Black
Posts: 14,132
In general, any flight could be credited to any *A program, as long as the original fare class earns miles on that program.
But since there currently is difficulties to get them to post on M&B itself, I'd personally would be a bit cautious of doing that.
intuition is offline  
Old Apr 25, 2015, 6:22 am
  #452  
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Heraklion, Greece
Posts: 7,557
Originally Posted by intuition
In general, any flight could be credited to any *A program, as long as the original fare class earns miles on that program.
But since there currently is difficulties to get them to post on M&B itself, I'd personally would be a bit cautious of doing that.
I'd be even more negative than you. The only "proof" TK will get will be a ticket number referring to a (no miles earning) I fare class. My guess is that, if successfully credited bat the end, similar to your case described in a different thread, this would take many, many months, emails, phone calls, posts in FT, you name it!
KLouis is offline  
Old Apr 25, 2015, 8:08 am
  #453  
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,244
Also got the upgrade for our return flights. But I don't know how they want to make any money with this.
31570324 is offline  
Old Apr 25, 2015, 2:56 pm
  #454  
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Heraklion, Greece
Posts: 7,557
Originally Posted by 31570324
Also got the upgrade for our return flights. But I don't know how they want to make any money with this.
Your question reminds me of something that happened to me about twenty years ago. I came home from a visit to my dentist and my German mother in law was amazed when she heard that I hadn't paid anything (sometimes we allow dentists to consider themselves colleagues of ours ). She was really shocked a while later when I told my wife that he (the dentist) would pass by our house the next day to bring us some of his home-made wine. My mother on law asked: "why is he coming by to bring you wine?". My answer to her was simple: "Because he had none at his practice!" Well, that's more or less A3's reason for the free upgrades.
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Old Apr 25, 2015, 6:36 pm
  #455  
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Canada
Programs: AC E50k, A3*G, UA*S, MR Titanium, HHonors Gold, Carlson Gold, NEXUS
Posts: 3,668
Originally Posted by KLouis
Your question reminds me of something that happened to me about twenty years ago. I came home from a visit to my dentist and my German mother in law was amazed when she heard that I hadn't paid anything (sometimes we allow dentists to consider themselves colleagues of ours ). She was really shocked a while later when I told my wife that he (the dentist) would pass by our house the next day to bring us some of his home-made wine. My mother on law asked: "why is he coming by to bring you wine?". My answer to her was simple: "Because he had none at his practice!" Well, that's more or less A3's reason for the free upgrades.
You're making a strong case for me to move to Greece...
pewpew is offline  
Old Apr 26, 2015, 2:09 am
  #456  
Moderator, Finnair
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: MMX (CPH)
Programs: Eurobonus Diamond, QR Platinum, AY+ Platinum, A3*G, Nordic Choice Lifetime Platinum, SJ Prio Black
Posts: 14,132
How to make money on free seat upgrades?

Like on all other activities in a loyalty program. By incentivize travelers to spend more with the airline, either by devoting a larger portion (preferably all) of their travel spendings or to actually increase their travel spendings.

Even on the freeloading gold, who only does the bare minimum 4 segments/year and has zero intent to spend more with the airline, there is potential revenue for the airline. They get to sell the same economy seat twice on a flight with high load factor in Y and low load factor in J. And if they expect to sell a lot of J, then there just isn't any I availability.

If OP takes a look at other FF-programs I think he will find upgrades to be quite a common practice.
intuition is offline  
Old Apr 26, 2015, 4:03 am
  #457  
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Germany
Posts: 1,244
Well I don't think they make any money with us. We paid 41 per leg/passenger for a 3 hours flight. With the upgrade vouchers it's a amazing deal for us, but not for the airline. My personal mind is, that they shouldn't upgrade from the cheapest fares, but hey it's good for us. And I don't collect any miles with them anymore since they changed their rules.
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Old Apr 26, 2015, 4:32 am
  #458  
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Heraklion, Greece
Posts: 7,557
Originally Posted by 31570324
Well I don't think they make any money with us. We paid 41 per leg/passenger for a 3 hours flight. With the upgrade vouchers it's a amazing deal for us, but not for the airline. My personal mind is, that they shouldn't upgrade from the cheapest fares, but hey it's good for us. And I don't collect any miles with them anymore since they changed their rules.
My very simple mind tells me that, as Intuition explained, they do make money through the upgrades but they were making no money through you.

Last edited by KLouis; Apr 26, 2015 at 6:47 am
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Old Apr 26, 2015, 7:49 am
  #459  
Moderator, Finnair
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: MMX (CPH)
Programs: Eurobonus Diamond, QR Platinum, AY+ Platinum, A3*G, Nordic Choice Lifetime Platinum, SJ Prio Black
Posts: 14,132
Originally Posted by 31570324
Well I don't think they make any money with us. We paid 41 per leg/passenger for a 3 hours flight. With the upgrade vouchers it's a amazing deal for us, but not for the airline. My personal mind is, that they shouldn't upgrade from the cheapest fares, but hey it's good for us. And I don't collect any miles with them anymore since they changed their rules.
So, if they made it harder to use the upgrade instrument, you would be more loyal to the airline?! Can't really follow your line of reasoning here.

Certainly, an airline can have any kind of rules for their perks. In my mind, having a few perks that are very easy to use is advantageous to the customer and therefore builds better loyalty and therefore is advantageous to the airline.

There are other programs that upgrades their top tier members from any fare class, and I spend tons of money with them. In fact, I'd say that around 33% of my loyalty to that airline comes from this single easy to use perk.


And, there are programs that does upgrades but has a so complex set of rules that it takes 2 A4 pages to print them (Hey M&M, I'm looking at you...).
I'd personally be disappointed if it turned out that the advertised perk was very difficult to use in real life.
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Old Apr 26, 2015, 8:57 am
  #460  
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I just wish you could upgrade at the airport or on another carrier's stock
pewpew is offline  
Old Apr 27, 2015, 5:30 pm
  #461  
Moderator: Aegean Miles+Bonus
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: AMS / ATH
Programs: AFKL Plat, A3 Gold
Posts: 7,321
This must be my luck. Booked an (expensive!) one-way AMS-MUC-ATH, first segment operated by LH, seconds by A3. Both have A3 flight numbers.

So I booked through travelplanet24, (one of?) the largest OTAs in Greece. Turns out the ticket was issued on 050 stock (=Olympic)! None of the flight segments have anything to do with Olympic. Does anybody have any experience with upgrading such ticket? Will they deny since it needs to be A3 ticket stock? Guess I will call tomorrow..
Xandrios is offline  
Old Apr 27, 2015, 7:06 pm
  #462  
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Originally Posted by Xandrios
This must be my luck. Booked an (expensive!) one-way AMS-MUC-ATH, first segment operated by LH, seconds by A3. Both have A3 flight numbers.

So I booked through travelplanet24, (one of?) the largest OTAs in Greece. Turns out the ticket was issued on 050 stock (=Olympic)! None of the flight segments have anything to do with Olympic. Does anybody have any experience with upgrading such ticket? Will they deny since it needs to be A3 ticket stock? Guess I will call tomorrow..
I feel like it could work! Not sure though.
pewpew is offline  
Old Apr 28, 2015, 4:56 am
  #463  
Moderator: Aegean Miles+Bonus
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: AMS / ATH
Programs: AFKL Plat, A3 Gold
Posts: 7,321
It does not They denied because of the 390-rule: It has to be on Aegean ticket stock. Guess I will try again tonight, maybe another operator may be more forgiving..

Alternatively I could try to get a refund through the OTA; its a flex ticket thus refundable for free. And then rebook on the Aegean website. Also it seems that the Aegean website lets me rebook the flight for free online, eg to an earlier feeder flight. With some luck that would change the e-ticket to 390...

Its still weird though. All flights in the booking are A3 coded. Normally the marketing carrier of the first segment is the one issuing the ticket, so this should have been A3 (390-xxx).

Is this a matter of the OTA doing tricks, or Aegean themselves routing bookings through Olympic for whatever reason? When looking through the Olympic website it even becomes clear that they even use the exact same prices, as well as the same booking engine as Aegean. The website is a copy of the Aegean one with a changed logo!

Last edited by Xandrios; Apr 28, 2015 at 5:07 am
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Old Apr 28, 2015, 6:56 am
  #464  
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: YXY
Posts: 3,504
Originally Posted by Xandrios
Normally the marketing carrier of the first segment is the one issuing the ticket, so this should have been A3 (390-xxx).
I'm not aware of such a rule. If given a choice, a travel agent will usually pick the ticket stock that gives them the higher kickback or other benefits.
sokolov is offline  
Old Apr 28, 2015, 11:24 am
  #465  
Moderator: Aegean Miles+Bonus
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: AMS / ATH
Programs: AFKL Plat, A3 Gold
Posts: 7,321
Hmm that is a good point. I guess I assumed this to be a rule as it pretty much always seems to be the case.

I called Aegean again: No can do with 050 ticket. So for future reference: Be VERY careful when booking through an OTA: Even with Aegean flights it may be issued through Olympic and thus not upgradable.

Turns out that also availability has either now dried up, or I checked incorrectly before. I could have sworn it showed as available on the united website yesterday. Now not any more according to the Aegean lady, so I guess not much use in changing the flight selection to get a 390 e-ticket.. (if that would even work)

Seems I wont be able to use my coupons before November then. Thats really too bad!
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