Originally Posted by
Lord Jon
Don't kill me, I'm new!!
I recently booked a holiday with a travel agent to NYC in the coming summer.
As part of the booking I'd be flying with VS in Economy from LHR to JFK in the "O" fare bucket.
Unfortunately I wasn't offered any option other than Economy with the agent and was advised that I'd have to deal with Virgin for an upgrade as opposed to them.
When approaching Virgin, I was told that I'd have to arrange an upgrade on the day at the airport as opposed to online.
I just wanted to know if anyone on FT would know typically how much an upgrade would generally cost at the airport and whether this is all that likely.
I am not sure how much they would charge you at the airport. I called VA to discuss upgrades on my upcoming flight from LAX-JNB and they said that sometimes the gate agents will offer the upgrades. But I dont know what the chances of that are to be honest.
However, I did log into my booking and saw the option to upgrade to Upper Class for $3200 and I quickly acted on it knowing that this was extremely limited since most of the time they were offering the upgrade for $2742 EACH WAY (not $3200 RT that I got).
There's the option to bid for the seats too but that's based on a sliding scale and not a blank form where you can type in your desired amount to pay. The lowest I saw on the scale was at least $1200. Given that I have four 11 hour flights (LAX-LHR; LHR-JNB and return), $1200x4 = $4800 which is way more than I paid for my single upgrade when I checked my booking.
HTH