Originally Posted by jjLDNY

Over the past 6 months I've started flying for work, and have heavily geeked out on flyertalk to try and become a 'master of points(..)'!

I've amassed quite a few avios now, and given I'm useless with scheduling planned personal trips, I instead fancied making my work trips a little more enjoyable by changing a few JFK > LHR red-eyes to Biz from Prem. However, my current ticket is seat type T, and I need to cash-upgrade it to P in order to upgrade with Avios.

Everything I can see when looking manually on the BA site and calling up is W (Fully Flex), resulting in an excess of £1500 - obviously not worth it. However, I've been told that if I can change the seat to a P, on a plane with a Biz redemption, I can switch, pay for the P upgrade, then do a biz redemption, then switch it back to the date I desire, with it keeping the biz redemption (assuming the flight has a biz redemption seat available).

So. My challenge now is finding a P seat on a flight with Biz Redemption. I have ExpertFlyer, but although it's giving me supposed flights with P seats open, when I call to check with BA they aren't seeing those seats so I'm not sure EF is accurate.

Has anyone done something similar, or can suggest a route to identify P seats?

Originally Posted by jjLDNY

Update for everyone who was following. This was indeed possible, the gentleman I spoke to who's name began with R was very good, and instead of dismissing me this time noted the series of steps I needed him to perform, rather than repeating "not possible".

So, background again for those curious.

1. Current flight on Friday in a T seat (WTP) - let's call it flight 1
2. Want to change to Saturday flight U seat (CW) - let's call this flight 3
3. No T seats available on flight 3, meaning I have do find ANOTHER flight with T (WTP) seats, and U (CW) seats available - let's call this flight 2

So, I had to change to flight 2, to avoid moving into a W (fully flex) seat on flight 3 that I actually wanted which would have cost ALOT
Then, I had to upgrade to a CW U seat on that same flight
Then, I could change it back to the Saturday flight that I wanted

Total cost, £500 & 24k avios
Total cost if I would have moved direct to W on flight 3, then upgraded, £1500 for W seat + then £200 or so tax & 24k avios