Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
You need to ring up for a higher fare bucket. You can see what bucket you are in before booking (clicking on the flight number) or during booking (More Information line). The extra cost of going from O to N is sometimes £2.
I've tried various routes to find an online sources to upgauge the fare bucket, the nearest being to add the Chrome script add-on for ITA Matrix, but it is too flaky and uses online travel agents (at this point anyway) since the AA website - which is in this script too - doesn't do HBO.
But you call up and ask to go into N (typically) they can do it very easily. I don't pay fees but apparently there is a £5 for doing this if not Emerald or higher, I think the inability to select N online is a reason for waiving the fee.
The next best route for non Domestics, particularly if you are seeing O and Q fare fares, is to online go for a UuA to CE.....
CWS, if booking a Plus fare, I think there is now a way of booking a higher fare bucket online by using the no change fee feature of the fare. As an example, I made the following reservation on britishairways.com today:
I wanted to book an EDI-LGW flight for a Sunday in October. Prices for that route are currently £60 in fare bucket O (5 tier points), £63 in Q (5 tier points) and £68 in N (10 tier points). The flight I wanted was offered at a Plus fare of £63 (Q) and the other flights that day were £60 (O). However, I wanted to book in fare bucket N for the extra tier points.
Therefore, I looked at alternate dates to find an EDI-LGW Plus fare offered for £68, confirmed that it was fare bucket N, and booked it. (Part pay with Avios brought the cost down to £30). Then I went into Manage My Booking and changed the date and time of my flight to the Sunday flight that I wanted. (No problem doing this online despite having paid part of the fare with Avios.) There was no charge for the change and MMB shows that the modified reservation is still in fare bucket N and will earn 10 tier points.