Originally Posted by
acrooksie
Sorry for the ambiguity. To be clear: by "Latitude + cash" I mean "buying a Latitude fare with cash" and by "PE + points" I mean "buying a PE fare with points (of course plus a bit of cash to cover fees)". And my travel patterns on AC are exclusively TATL.
Personally I've been lucky and have managed to have continued success with the "Latitude attitude" approach the last couple years, even now that my Latitude fares are booking into super low buckets and every TATL flight is R0.
That being said, I agree that your strategy to shift purchases to cash PE tickets is a great way to limit downside and maximise your chance at the gate. And I suppose you just lose the chance of getting an early guarantee. But, at the same time, the guarantee is nice...recently I booked a set of tickets in B with a companion voucher and the entire itinerary was upgraded immediately for the two of us.
I never really find an opportunity where it makes sense for me to buy PE Flex. A lot of it certainly has to do with my booking and travel patterns. I don't really book flights until I am certain of the dates, so I don't value the flexibility component as much as others might. So with a fully flex fare I only really value the clearance window ... but it's not uncommon to find PE flex priced similarly to J lowest, so then the clearance window doesn't matter all of a sudden
But I like your idea to essentially do both: there's nothing stopping me from buying this itinerary on a cheap Latitude ticket, wait a few weeks to see if I get lucky, and switch to a PE ticket if not.
For my last couple of TATL MRs, I've ended up buying J for the YYZ-EU leg (because I am not prepared to do a MR with an overnight in anything but a lie-flat). That has the side benefit of getting me access to the SS in YYZ. I have bought a mix of LAT and PE seats for the return flight ... but I've been burned by that, because one return (from AMS-YYZ) which looked like a near certain upgrade from a K-LAT, failed when a music concert in AMS resulted in the flight going to J0. Unwilling to travel in Y, I ended up changing the return flight to depart from VIE, and then spent 5K points to position myself from AMS to VIE.
Increasingly I think I'm just going to abandon the latitude tickets, and only purchase PE seats. That will lock me into a seat that I can tolerate, with a higher upgrade chance. But yes, you can always buy a refundable seat, try the upgrade, and cancel/switch if it fails.