Originally Posted by
jsloan
Yes, you’re thinking about this correctly.
Can’t provide upgrade odds without knowing the day of the week, the current business class inventory (available in expert mode), found by searching for the long leg by itself.
If you can find a flight with upgrade space available, I’d take it. And personally I would only pay a $750 surcharge for a W fare in one of two cases: (a) I needed to use Skip the Waitlist; or (b) I would not have sufficient PlusPoints otherwise. If you have extra PlusPoints, what would you use them for? If you didn’t, how would it affect your decisions going forward?
You’ve left one scenario out of your analysis that is nearly as bad as paying $750 without getting upgraded, and that’s paying the $750, getting upgraded, and ending the year with PlusPoints that expire, or that you’re throwing at SFO-FAT in order to try to get some use out of them. 40 PlusPoints vs. $750 — in most cases, I’d rather have the $750.
Thank you for your feedback, jsloan. For some context, my situation with PPs may be unique: because my int travel schedule is somewhat flexible, I can book flights that usually have upgrade space. I've never had PPs left over at the end of the year. Actually, this year I ran out of PPs and had to use miles + cash to secure Polaris upgrades the past two months. From this standpoint, I see saving 40 PP as a value roughly equal to a single-leg upgrade: $350-450 and the standard miles deducted (~20-30k). This is why I’m inclined to pay the $750 more for the RT W fare, hoping (begging) the PP upgrades clears on both legs.
To your point about the travel days, outbound is 29 Jan (Thursday), which shows at the moment: J/JN/C/D/Z/ZN/P = 9, and PN/PZ/IN = 0. The return is 7 Feb (Saturday), and shows the same count as the outbound...Thanks for any additional feedback!