Guide to upgrade friend's BA flight using your Avios
Here is a quick guide on how to upgrade a friend who already has purchased a PE commercial ticket, and you want to use your Avios to upgrade his ticket to CW
1. Make sure your friend has a BA Executive Club membership, and attaches his BAEC number to his booking
and
2. He must add you as a third party nominee’ on his BAEC account, and create a password, which he must pass to you.
3. You call BAEC number in your country (not the reservations line)
4. (choose change booking option) #3?
and
5. You must have his
a) PNR and BAE account number
b) his BAEC Nominee password he created when appointing you
c) his address as CSR will ask for first line and Postal Code of his address.
6. If CW award seats are available, you can upgrade using your Avios and paying the small cash amount
Just by way of example, I upgraded a friend from PE to CW on LHR-HKG flight and it cost me 36,000 Avios (off peak) -being difference between PE redemption and CW redemption Avios required plus - about $ 180 additional fees. Peak would be higher (double?). Upgrade was available with cash for over GBP 4,500!
Posting because I got a very good experienced CSR in BA Delhi Call Center who knew what he was doing.
Prior to that I had got one CSR who made a ludicrous suggestion that I should pay and transfer my Avios to my friend's BA account and that is the only way I could use my Avios to upgrade his flight.
.
Another CSR suggested I should ask my friend to add me as third-party nominee on his PNR (I don't think you can even do that, as i could not find an easy way to do so.
One CSR suggested I should get my friend on a conference call and get my friend's approval for me to touch his PNR (and we actually did but then he said no seats were available to upgrade, otherwise that might have worked but difficult when you are in different time zones!
All in all, partly due to UK/Europe data Protection laws, and partly due to inexperienced CSR, it took me a while to sort this " easiest way to upgrade a friend using my Avios" conundrum, hence posting here in case it helps others in future.