Cheetah_SA
Sep 11, 06, 8:14 am
It's really annoying trying to get upgrade seats on SA. Suppose, as has recently been my case, I want seats to anywhere in Europe with a window of 3 days for each of the outbound and inbound legs. Even when I go to the Voyager counter it is really tedious getting them to try all the combinations. And inevitably "the computer says noooo...". :(
But you can book business class award seats online and hold them for 72 hours. (Actually they seem to keep them a bit longer and have phoned me before cancelling expired bookings.) And those seats are in the same booking class (I) as upgrade seats. So I decided to try the following:
After assiduously scanning the Voyager web site over many days, I finally managed to book business class awards online and used the "pay taxes later" option in order to put them on hold. I actually used 2 one-way awards because I could only get availability into FRA or LHR and out of CDG. So now I had secured the I class seats. Then I went to Voyager's airport desk and asked if I could swap those for upgrades. They said sure, and sent me to the ticket desk to buy my K-class tickets, making sure the agent didn't cancel my I-class reservation. When I got back they issued the awards and duly issued me with the upgraded tickets.
It wasn't completely plain sailing. The agent at the Voyager desk took over an hour to get it all done. Apparently this was because I had two PNR's for my one-way bookings and the new booking had created 2 more. He was very friendly about it and appeared competent. He seemed to be the senior chap on duty; other agents would periodically come to him with queries. Heaven knows if another agent would have managed it - or even tried. Eventually I left with hand-written endorsements on my tickets and I hope it all works in the end. :eek: (Everything looks OK on CheckMyTrip.)
I thought that was pretty nifty. So nifty I almost didn't want to share it, I'm ashamed to say. :o (Hell, those award seats are getting scarcer than hen's teeth.) But I figured the few faithfuls on FT are unlikely to make a huge difference. Besides if we do this often enough it can hopefully become an unofficial but dependable workaround.
But you can book business class award seats online and hold them for 72 hours. (Actually they seem to keep them a bit longer and have phoned me before cancelling expired bookings.) And those seats are in the same booking class (I) as upgrade seats. So I decided to try the following:
After assiduously scanning the Voyager web site over many days, I finally managed to book business class awards online and used the "pay taxes later" option in order to put them on hold. I actually used 2 one-way awards because I could only get availability into FRA or LHR and out of CDG. So now I had secured the I class seats. Then I went to Voyager's airport desk and asked if I could swap those for upgrades. They said sure, and sent me to the ticket desk to buy my K-class tickets, making sure the agent didn't cancel my I-class reservation. When I got back they issued the awards and duly issued me with the upgraded tickets.
It wasn't completely plain sailing. The agent at the Voyager desk took over an hour to get it all done. Apparently this was because I had two PNR's for my one-way bookings and the new booking had created 2 more. He was very friendly about it and appeared competent. He seemed to be the senior chap on duty; other agents would periodically come to him with queries. Heaven knows if another agent would have managed it - or even tried. Eventually I left with hand-written endorsements on my tickets and I hope it all works in the end. :eek: (Everything looks OK on CheckMyTrip.)
I thought that was pretty nifty. So nifty I almost didn't want to share it, I'm ashamed to say. :o (Hell, those award seats are getting scarcer than hen's teeth.) But I figured the few faithfuls on FT are unlikely to make a huge difference. Besides if we do this often enough it can hopefully become an unofficial but dependable workaround.