smellme

I'm flying on 12.02.2017 IST - JFK on TK1 and on 05.03.2017 IAH - IST on TK34. I booked it in economy hoping to upgrade using my Elite+ vouchers since ExpertFlyer is showing J4 on both flights. I called the call center but they told me that there is no availability on those flights, but they will put me on wait list and I should call back in 24h to check if the upgrades will clear. I called but they didn't.

What gives? Is the ExpertFlyer wrong? I also looked at the seat map in the J cabin and it looks like on both flights the cabins are about 75% empty. Is there a chance that the upgrade will clear later? What about check in, are all the seats for grabs then or will they rather fly empty?

Explorer789

Upgrades are approved on availability basis at check in time, like the call center said. Even if the flight is very empty right now, then chances there is probably going to be paying customers that buy those seats since your flight date is months from now. Even then, there is airline and star alliance status that will give upgrade preference to others.

So to answer whether your upgrade will clear or not, there's no way to know. Comes down to luck. Only way to guarantee a J class seat is book an award ticket instead.

LH4116

That sounds very incorrect. Who gave you that information?

Voucher upgrades are confirmed if there's J-class availability. Best way to check is to do a test booking in Business Class. If it gives you J-Class, then it's safe to assume that you can confirm your voucher upgrade.

Award tickets book in I-class.

smellme

That's a good tip LH4116, thank you. I just did a dummy booking and on both flights it booked me into J, so there should be availability.

I also believe that Explorer789's information is not correct, they didn't say to wait until check in but 24h. And FYI I'm Elite+ which is the highest status in TK.

airoli

This has been my experience as well.

Just keep in mind that TK uses married segment logic. So if your itinerary is going beyond IST (e.g. TLV-IST-JFK / IAH-IST-TLV), you need to look for J class using the entire itinerary and not just the long-haul segments.

Gnopps

This is very true. Also TK is even more "evil" in that outbound & return segments affect each other:

IST-BKK will show J2 and BKK-IST will show J2. If you book IST-BKK in J in the GDS (booking system) then availability may change for the return so BKK-IST will show J0 and can't be booked. When I worked as a travel agent I sometimes managed to solve this by booking the return segment first.

Another thing airlines might do (don't remember if TK did this) is to show different availability depending on whether you have a ticketed booking or not. So availbility AMS-IST may show as J2 when you make a new booking, but if you have an existing, ticketed booking open where you want to change dates then availability will show as J0.

In short: There is so much more to availability than just what EF says. EF is a very trustworthy source but there are limitations why their availability may not correlate with the airline's. Also, HUACA - you may just have gotten an incompetent agent.

smellme

Thanks for the info. I called again and the agent told me that not only there is no availability in J, but there is no availability in business at all, as in the whole cabin is full. This is clearly not true as you can book seats in J on those flights.

airoli: it's like you're saying, I'm flying TLV-IST-JFK / IAH-IST-TLV but I tried 3 agents so far and they couldn't upgrade me on neither TLV-IST-JFK, IST-JFK, IAH-IST nor IAH-IST-TLV.

airoli

I have found the safest way to confirm E+ Voucher upgrade space to be looking for a "restricted capacity" Business class reward inventory on the entire itinerary.

If the TK website shows Business class award seats available for my flights, I then book them in Economy and call to apply the vouchers. This typically works, although the process is still far from straightforward.

boosh

I thought restricted award booked into a different booking class?

I have sometimes found that there is no J class when trying to do a dummy booking, or on ITA, but when calling up the call centre they seem to find it on the same flights.

What I have done is find the flights I want, make a reservation, call them up and see if there is J availability and if there is go ahead and ticket the reservation and call back to upgrade. That does involve a bit of trial and error though