Originally Posted by
stellaf80
I'm trying to book flights back to the UK from the US for my family in October and was hoping to find flights that could be upgraded with miles as we have a lot of miles, but not enough to send all four of us business. I signed up for an Expert Flyer account and the only flights that seem to be showing that they have seat availability for upgrading with miles are the BA-operated ones, but you need to book a fare with booking class Y to qualify with BA for mileage upgrades. Expert Flyer says there are Y-class flights available to book, but the only flights showing on the AA website are Q & O. Any advice on how I go about finding elusive Y-class flights to book? Or experience with expert flyer and how accurate they are?
Sorry but you have a lot of misunderstandings with your strategy.
1) You don't use EF to search for upgrade space on BA. Any C space you see on EF for a BA operated flight is completely irrelevant when it comes to upgrades.
2) The mileage upgrades you're referencing on BA require a full Y fare, as you noted, but these upgrades are only one class so even if you were to do this it would only get you to PE.
3) The full Y (and W, for upgrades from PE to business) fares are going to be prohibitively expensive, you can usually just buy discounted business (and certainly PE) for much cheaper. For example looking at a random date the full Y fare for a JFK-LHR roundtrip is $4300 each. Spending $4300 for economy then miles to upgrade to PE is a terrible deal.