timb777

Hi there

I am flying to Shanghai later this year, booked in Y and have a silver comp upgrade to use.

Hence, I am thinking of upgrading my Y ticket to PE by paying the $620 fare difference with airpoints and then using my silver comp to business, giving me a Y-BP upgrade with guaranteed PE for 620 airpoints.

My question is whether my ticket would still earn miles once upgraded to PE or would it become a "rewards ticket" booking class and I'm left with nothing to credit to my TK account?

Alternatively, does the PE booking class become void for comp upgrades if the fare class upgrade to silver is paid for with airpoints?

Has anyone ever tried this upgrade route before?

It's important that I credit some miles to my TK*G account to maintain gold (i'd swap back to my TK FF in the lounge once upgrades have cleared).

Cheers in advance for any advice

Xiaotung

You cannot buy up to PE using Airpoints. This can only be done by cash. Once you pay the fare difference, your ticket will be re-issued and you will be in a paid PE fare, earning PE mileage. You can then use your Silver upgrade to Business. If successful, you will still earn mileage at the PE rate. Note if your upgrade is cleared, they will re-book you to Business booking class R which is an ineligible class to earn partner miles. If your flight doesn't credit automatically, as it often doesn't in this case, you may have to ask TK to credit it retrospectively with some convincing to do.

ps107

With a travel agent issued economy ticket, is it possible to upgrade by paying the fare difference by ringing the AirNZ call centre?

sbiddle

No. If you have a ticket issued by a travel agent all changes need to be made by them.

NZbutterfly

Sbiddle is right in that you need to go via the travel agent to make changes prior to your first flight, BUT if you have more than one flight on your ticket, once you have taken the first flight you can then call air NZ to pay the fare difference to upgrade, eg the return leg of your trip or if you're stopping over somewhere you can upgrade the next flight via NZ call centre. You just need to take that first flight - then NZ can manage it

Although travel agents have their place, I try to avoid them as it's too painful trying to change things to suit my plans via them. Easier to cut out the middle man and go straight to the people that know. Plus I've been stuffed around with their "24-7" NONavailability to help. Someone is always at NZ to help!


For Timb777
You can only use airpoints to pay for an upgrade if elite, otherwise it's the one up system which can be variable as to when you find out IF you were successful. You could use your RU to get to PE and apply for one up bid to go from PE to BP.
I can't tell you about success rates of your RU clearing or one up bids on your route though.

Long haul if you're adamant you want a bit more comfort than economy, paying cash is still the safest way to guarantee.

So whatever class you've paid up to eg econ or PE, you will earn your TK points for that. However I don't know the actual fare buckets that might be excluded from earning, might be on the NZ website?

Xiaotung

Paying fare difference to the higher cabin is really not an "upgrade." You are simply buying a new higher cabin ticket less the money you have already paid.

It's like saying if I bought a PE ticket I will be guaranteed to sit in the PE cabin.

KiwiJC

Unless I'm mis-interpreting this statement, you're not quite correct there - you can only use one or two RU(s) or an Elite APD Upgrade or a One-Up, but only one of these, so the only way to go two classes up is a double recognition upgrade (if you're gold or elite) on the long haul routes.

Once you use any of the above methods to request an upgrade the option to upgrade is no longer available for the flight, so you couldn't retrospectively go back and upgrade it further by using a recognition upgrade, then requesting a One-Up. Also, a silver RU wouldn't post until a couple of days before the flight as well, so you'd be too late for a One-Up

Xiaotung

You are correct. You can't combine oneup with RU under any circumstances.

NZbutterfly

Thanks for the correction

ps107

Thanks. Sounds good! I will definitely try this for the return. If I'd bought the tickets myself I would've forked out the fare difference in a heartbeat, but as it's done through the travel dragons at work, I've been OneUp bidding more or less the fare difference and hoping for the best. Would rather have confirmed PE and opportunistic BP especially now these refitted 777s seem to be the norm.

sbiddle

Bidding the fare difference on a OneUp is not smart - even if you bid more there is absolutely no guarantee that it will be accepted.

Xiaotung

Why would anyone do it? Bidding the amount near fare difference on a Oneup gives you no upgrade guarantee and you earn Airpoints based on the original ticket. Paying fare difference to rebook into the higher cabin will guarantee you in the higher cabin and you earn Airpoints based on the higher cabin rate.

I don't really understand the argument here.

ps107

The ticket gets purchased for me through a travel agent that doesn't speak English or accept western credit cards with a 'cheapest available economy' policy of which I have no say in. As I said, if I was buying it myself, I would definitely pay the extra for PE at the time of booking.

Now that NZButterfly has informed that it may be possible to change through AirNZ call centre after the first sector has been flown, I'll give that a try next time.