Originally Posted by
The Saint
This has changed quite recently.
The booking engine will now offer the I upgrade (i.e. the fixed fee upgrade that used to be offered in MMB after you had made the booking) for ex-UK bookings at the time of booking (if it is available). If it is not available, the upgrade offered will be to the cheapest club fare in the J C D R hierarchy.
I suppose on the upside this takes the guesswork out of whether an "instant" upgrade will be available after completing the booking. I did think, however, that if you did take the "I" upgrade in advance, you did get the TPs and Miles for an I class booking.
This is all very odd.
If "I" bucket fares are available
at the time of booking then they will have to show when you select class "club europe", ticket type "lowest price". Otherwise, the "lowest price" would be a misrepresentation: you can hardly say that a price available just by clicking through a different route in the booking engine is not an "available" price. But that, in effect, would just mean that the "I" bucket has become a new, cheaper, class of Club Europe ticket (and has nothing to do with upgrades from ET, save in the way KUPs are notionally 'upgrades').
That seems to me, however, to defeat the point. Surely the point of these "proactive upgrades" (as they are described) is to encourage people who would not normally play the CE price to upgrade for a discounted price, not to offer a cheaper price to people who would book into CE directly? For that purpose, only offering the upgrade in MMB makes a lot of sense: people who will fly business in any event (particularly corporate passengers) will book straight into CE (because they won't want the risk of being stuck in ET), the 'cheaper' amongst us who would not book directly into CE will book into ET but consider a reduced price upgrade to CE if available.
I don't see how they can refuse tier points on I fares as matters stand: not least because of
https://www.britishairways.com/trave...club/_gf/en_gb
J