You might be mixing stuff. There are several upgrade options:
1. cash if you leave from PRG - not under discussion here
2. upgrade to business on paid flight, if you booked certain classes. Here the link http://www.csa.cz/en/ok_plus/okp_ear...h_airlines.htm is most helpful, only booking classes N, S, V, W are not eligible for upgrade. Basically unless it's cheap red-fare, you are eligible for upgrade.
3. upgrade to business on award tickets. You are eligible for upgrade to business class if you booked economy ticket, as it is booked under Y class, or certainly not one of the non-eligible ones. Should not cost you anything extra.
4. confirmed upgrades with points. Here is where you can pay for an upgrade with miles if you do not have status or if you want confirmed upgrade, only if your ticket is in Y or M (expensive economy tickets).
It all depends if you have status with CSA:
- no status, only 1 and 4 apply
- Silver and Gold - unless it's a trip you really want upgrade and you know it might be full, go for options 2 or 3
- Platinum - no worries, you have confirmed upgrade if not full in C.
Programs: CSA OK+ Platinum, SPG Platinum, Priority Club Platinum RA
Posts: 175
Quote:
Originally Posted by CAlex
You might be mixing stuff. There are several upgrade options:
1. cash if you leave from PRG - not under discussion here
2. upgrade to business on paid flight, if you booked certain classes. Here the link http://www.csa.cz/en/ok_plus/okp_ear...h_airlines.htm is most helpful, only booking classes N, S, V, W are not eligible for upgrade. Basically unless it's cheap red-fare, you are eligible for upgrade.
3. upgrade to business on award tickets. You are eligible for upgrade to business class if you booked economy ticket, as it is booked under Y class, or certainly not one of the non-eligible ones. Should not cost you anything extra.
4. confirmed upgrades with points. Here is where you can pay for an upgrade with miles if you do not have status or if you want confirmed upgrade, only if your ticket is in Y or M (expensive economy tickets).
It all depends if you have status with CSA:
- no status, only 1 and 4 apply
- Silver and Gold - unless it's a trip you really want upgrade and you know it might be full, go for options 2 or 3
- Platinum - no worries, you have confirmed upgrade if not full in C.
Hm - just for my clarification. I understand 1.) and 2.) Not quite sure about 3.) I thought that award tickets were not eligible for upgrade, but the relevant classes are sort of in a gray area as they are not explicitly mentioned in the link you supplied, e.g. award business class ticket is class Z, no idea what the class is for economy award (E,O,P,R?).
I would like to point out 5.)
Only for Platinum: Confirmed upgrade to C class from 24 hours before departure when booked in Y or M. Can be relevant on very busy segments with lots of Plats (Monday morning, Thursday/Friday afternoon, to/from AMS, CDG, MXP), as upgrades are handed out on the basis of time of arrival at the gate, and on non-PRG airports they are not checking whether the plats have perhaps a non-qualifying ticket (N,S,V,W). So then it helps when you are the first Plat to be upgraded.
M is sometimes the cheapest option when using Prague as a hub (but not as a final destination).
So, beeing a Silver member i could book one of the following classes: A, B, H, K, L, Q, T, U, X, and on availability pay 10 K(OSL-PRG) for the uppgrade?
I have to admit though, that i'm in large not to impressed by the contextual dimensions of the CSA OK-plus web structure.
OS331, if you are Silver you can just book a regular ticket (you can't choose the exact booking class online), go to the gate and request upgrade. If it's not full in business there are >50% chances you will get it.
In my opinion it is not worth to use 10k miles for an upgrade for 2 hours, unless it's part of a special trip or event.
yep, it's really not worthy to spend 10k miles on a 1 or 2 hour flight.
with any frequent flyer and not on a busy hour / day you get free upgrade and it's also true that on some airports outside Prague they don't check if you are really eligible. But they check in JFK for example, I forget what class I had cos I had a roundtrip with 6 destinations on one ticket over us and back to prague, tunred out to be the low fare (red ticket) and they didn't wanted to upgrade me back to prague even when I was platinum. So sometimes they check, sometimes not but definitely if you don't have the low fare tickets you are eligible for upgrade.
