Welcome to this weeks trip report, my first for 2024, and which has the potential to be the most boring trip report of the year!
The entire “trip in a day” is Newcastle-Heathrow-Milan-Heathrow-Newcastle, all booked in Economy, outbound at 06:35 and, if all goes to schedule, landing back in Newcastle at 19:50 the same day without my leaving Milan airport. The reason I booked this is primarily as an experiment in value and upgrade potentials on BA. At the time of booking, Milan and back in economy was under £180 and the equivalent business fare was over £620. I had a £150 voucher in hand from BA as compensation for an issue on a flight back before I started doing trip reports and so this has covered the majority of the fare.
What I’m curious about within this small sample set is whether there is any viable financial advantage in booking economy and then upgrading via the various mechanisms rather than paying the full business fare at time of booking. If there are no upgrades available then this trip will treble the total number of economy flights I’ve taken on BA so that experience itself will be interesting to me. With the flights I currently have booked I’ll reach my target of BA Gold Guest List status by mid-May and so potentially it makes sense to leverage that status from May-Sept whilst travelling “back of the bus”.
There are four main routes that I know of to upgrade via BA:
- Call centre upgrades on request. From what I have read this is considered the most expensive option and I believe the price quoted will be the current difference between the booked fare and the fare of the class you want to upgrade to.
- Proactive Online Upgrades (POUGs) Offered within your booking. You have to go looking for these, BA will not tell you they’re available.
- Airport Upgrades (AUPs) requested at the airport check in or the BA lounge service desk.
- Operational Upgrades (OPUPs) are where you receive a free of charge upgrade, often at the gate, where the cabin you are booked into is oversold.
At the time of booking the exit rows were available on three of the four segments but on Milan-Newcastle they were reserved for the business cabin. Thankfully the exit rows on the that leg were released from the business cabin yesterday and so I have moved seats and now have an exit row on all four flights, and, as of this morning, the middle seat next to me is empty and blocked on all 4 legs. I doubt it will stay that way, a couple of the flights looked full, but I shall check everything again later once I have a beer in hand
The upgrade story so far, options 1 and 2 are a fail. I had cause to ring.the call centre last week to book a tier point run and whilst on the phone I also requested an upgrade price which was quoted at £640 for the four legs. Clearly this is more than I could have originally booked into business and was politely declined. No POUGs have been offered on the booking however this could potentially be self inflicted because I used the voucher to pay for the vast majority of the trip. When I tried to request an upgrade online I received a ‘trade fare’ error. We’ll see how the other two upgrade options play out tomorrow.
As I did with my Christmas trip, I’ve booked the night in the Doubletree at the airport. Despite the lack of sleep on my last visit it was still a pleasure to be able to just amble over to the airport in the morning and I’ll be doing this for all early starts in future. The ability to choose any travel time I fancy on the evening before rather than be dependent on an early morning taxi on the day of the flight makes it worth it, plus its an excuse for an additional night out!
And with that long preamble it is time to pack up my backpack, book an Uber, and head to the hotel.