bbtrvl

Has anyone bought EMS at the gate (either because the GA made a public upsell announcement, or unsolicited)? I am wondering how much discount (if any) can usually be gotten at that point.

klanfa

Last time I flew B6 was AUA-FLL, pretty low LF and plenty of open seats. They tried selling EMS seats at their online going price of $50 once the boarding was complete. That said, I've seen the price for EMS go down some $10-15 from the online price on SRQ-JFK last December during check-in.

Intheair2night

Given it has to be done before you check in, I could theoretically book a flight for July today, then call the Mosaic line and do a points upgrade to EMS?

MSYtoJFKagain

Yes.

Keep in mind there is an unofficial policy to upgrade Mosaic customers to EMS seats when they are available at the gate too. YMMV obviously.

OEBB

Regarding Mosaic free upgrades my experience has varied based on airport (I know, not surprising). JFK is my home airport and I have found as long as I go to the Mosaic desk to get my ticket printed (even if not checking a bag) they will always give me an EMS seat if one is available. When I connect through Boston a gate agent will almost always change my seat. Based on that, I would assume the focus cities are best for this, but...

At FLL and LGB I've never had them give me an EMS seat at check-in (at Mosaic counter) or at gate on flights where the seats are available. Also, no luck at ORD/CHS/BUF/etc, but given those aren't focus cities I don't expect it.

Generally, on flights over 3 hours I'll just use points to guarantee I get the seat and for flights less than 3 hours I'm happy if I get it and not concerned if I don't.

jay_dubya

you could do a points upgrade to EMS on jetblue.com

Intheair2night

I'm looking at JFK-SEA RT, the outbound looks on the full side so was debating using the points there to lock it in, while trying for the free upgrade on the inbound. Do you think that makes sense?

OEBB

Conceptually, but if the return is SEA-JFK I don't have a sense for how likely the SEA team is to give you EMS for free. So you risk there being open seats, but then not getting it.

In your situation I would go ahead and use points both ways. Points for EMS is such a good value. I'm tall (6'2") so there's a big difference to me in EMS vs. E for 5+ hours.

jay_dubya

I wouldn't risk it to save 1000 points

ralphs

I think it depends how long your legs are, tbh. I find Jetblue normal economy to be a good enough product.

FTNNBP

I flew out of JFK this past Saturday on a 7AM JFK-SFO flight and was surprised to find out at the gate that my companion and I had been upgraded to Mint class from our purchased EMS seats. When we were going thru security the JetBlue app had popped up a notification of a seat change but I figured they had simply moved us from our seats in 6A/B to the two aisle seats on that row. I had printed out paper boarding passes with the old seats so when the gate agent tried to scan my pass it failed and she gave us new passes with mint seats. The flight was full and the night before I had seen 3 mint seats still opened so I guess in order to get 2 other economy guest on the flight they upgraded us due to my Mosaic status. This is probably highly unlikely to happen again as I've flown transcon multiple times with empty seats in mint and never had received an upgrade. Either way my traveling companion and I were extremely happy to get to spend 6 hours in mint.

MSYtoJFKagain

Congrats!

That's a heck of a nice surprise.

ziggynagy

2 open mint seats right now, they're still offering at $500/seat to upgrade.

diburning

Unless Core is full with standbys waiting to get on, they won't op-up anyone to Mint.

MSYtoJFKagain

Even with standbys, they won't op-up. Only in an overbooking situation will B6 upgrade anyone. I've seen plenty of standbys turned away and had Mint go out with 2+ empty seats.