Originally Posted by
orbitmic
I know this is the exception from LHR where people want to change an avios booking to another flight, but in this particular case, the OP wants to both change flight and upgrade travel class and I'm not sure if this might make things quite a bit harder? I can imagine if J is available on the other flight and there is a promotional upgrade available, then agents might accept to move the op for a fee and then sell the cash upgrade, but if it is about upgrading with avios as seems to be the case from the op, I was under the (quite possibly mistaken) impression that airport staff would not be able to collect avios and that this would have to be done through the call centre? Again, happy to be corrected if I got that wrong.
Yes, I wouldn't want to give the impression it's easy to do. But I know they can move and then AUP. If there is redemption space then AUPs will almost certainly be there. BA staff at LHR can collect Avios, but only to pay for the AUP and the implied exchange rate would be very high for that (hence BA would be happy to do it!). The other factor is that if this is all done close to departure there is a risk of missing out on First catering since there isn't that much contingency for those meals. Certainly it would be best to do it before OLCI via YouFirst, if First shows up.