AirTran Airways A+ Rewards - Attempting to upgrade to Business Class using online check-in

I am flying from HPN to PBI tomorrow afternoon and during online check-in I was prompted with the question if I want to upgrade to business class for $69. I am booked in H fare class which I wasn't sure was upgradeable. In any case, I received the following error message when I tried 2 different credit cards:

"We are unable to complete your upgrade purchase with this credit card. Please try another credit card or continue without upgrading"

Is this a website error or shoul I not have been offered the upgrade and it is not letting me charge it due to fare class?

This happened to us when we were flying JAX-ATL-LAX in August. We checked in online right at 24 hours out.

There were business class seats available for upgrade ATL-LAX, the website presented us with the $99 upgrade option, we attempted to complete the transaction, got the exact same message whether we tried with Mastercard or Visa or American Express. We called the A+ customer service line and upgraded through the agent - hoping the whole wait time that the seats weren't being snagged by others while we were on hold. The agent was not sure why the website didn't allow it but she had no trouble - it was really fast.

We have always been able to upgrade the ATL-LAX segment even when flying on the least expensive web fares. The site really shouldn't present the option to us if it's not an upgradeable fare so I don't think it was due to your fare class - I think it's a website error.

Thanks Flightfulbird...your reponse helped a lot. I called AirTran and they were able to process the upgrade over the phone. They said the issue could have been that I had used the $25 Voucher available for Florida flights and now their online system was unable to process the upgrade if a voucher was used. Interesting. In any case, I am all set with my upgrade tomorrow. I liked the fact they prorate the upgrade since I already paid $6 for a confirmed seat, so the total came to $63, not $69.

Thanks Flightfulbird...your reponse helped a lot. I called AirTran and they were able to process the upgrade over the phone. They said the issue could have been that I had used the $25 Voucher available for Florida flights and now their online system was unable to process the upgrade if a voucher was used. Interesting. In any case, I am all set with my upgrade tomorrow. I liked the fact they prorate the upgrade since I already paid $6 for a confirmed seat, so the total came to $63, not $69.

Glad they were able to satisfy your request.

On AirTran, all fares are upgradeable for the same fee. In general, AirTran's policies make life a lot less complicated than the legacies.

Thanks vbaliny23, you helped me out as well - because we had also used $25 Florida vouchers to cover part of the airfare when we bought those tickets.

Very good to know that, if using a voucher on AirTran in the future, we should probably just call the agent at checkin time to purchase an upgrade instead of trying and being rejected online and maybe missing out on availability. It would be nice if the website gave a third option advising to call in instead of just telling us to try another card vs continue without upgrading.

I am very glad this worked out for you - excellent that there were still upgrade seats available to acquire on your flight! The ones from ATL-LAX get snagged fairly quickly. Thanks also for posting back and letting us know the outcome.

Actually, I am NEVER EVER able to purchase online upgrades on airtran.com on my airtran.com account; I get that same stupid error every time. Yet, if I book my flight using any other family member's airtran.com account, filling in my info with my own credit card number, it works. I really wish they'd fix this!

[Note that I'm not talking about A+ rewards account .... I'm talking about the e-mail & password account for the web site.]