Mar 9, 2015, 6:33 am
Last edit by: Gnopps
*** MOD NOTE: Please do not remove ***
A friendly reminder that Flyertalk is not a marketplace, and nothing may be offered (or solicited) for sale or barter within the general forums - which includes offering vouchers for free. For those with sufficient posts and length of membership, trading/exchange is allowed solely within Coupon Connection, and then only in accordance with the specific rules of that forum.
Please do not attempt to solicit, sell or trade upgrade vouchers within this forum. Posts will be deleted and the members concerned potentially subject to disciplinary action. **Please note that this includes directly using the PM system to do so without first posting in Coupon Connection**. Thanks for your co-operation.
A friendly reminder that Flyertalk is not a marketplace, and nothing may be offered (or solicited) for sale or barter within the general forums - which includes offering vouchers for free. For those with sufficient posts and length of membership, trading/exchange is allowed solely within Coupon Connection, and then only in accordance with the specific rules of that forum.
Please do not attempt to solicit, sell or trade upgrade vouchers within this forum. Posts will be deleted and the members concerned potentially subject to disciplinary action. **Please note that this includes directly using the PM system to do so without first posting in Coupon Connection**. Thanks for your co-operation.
Criteria
- You must be travelling on A3 or OA metal - codeshares are not included.
- The original ticket must be issued on either A3 (390) or OA (050) ticket stock.
- Only revenue (paid) tickets, in fare classes other than U, P & T on a GoLight fare basis, can be upgraded, but not redemption tickets.
- All flights on the ticket must be on A3 or OA metal.
- There must be award availability in I-class for the upgrades to clear. You can check this by logging in to M&B then going to https://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbon...t/spend-miles/ The results page will initially be a calendar. To see Business availability, you have to click through to the next step. (You can also use a free or paid tool such as ANA website, UA website (looking for saver award space), Aeroplan, AwardNexus or ExpertFlyer to check for availability.)
- One coupon per person per journey leg is required - so, for example, TXL-ATH-SKG and return via the same route would require four coupons per person.
- Anyone can be upgraded using the coupons - you do not have to be travelling on the same booking or even the same plane.
Procedure
- Call A3 to request the upgrade. The phone numbers are listed at https://aegeanairlines.custhelp.com/ (most of them should go to the same call centre in Greece).
- If successful, a new ticket will be issued (with a new number). The PNR will remain unchanged.
- You are liable for any extra taxes applicable to Business Class (e.g. APD from the UK). Sometimes this gets charged, sometimes it doesn't - if it's due and you're not charged because the agent forgets, you've just been lucky.
- If there's no immediate I-class availability, you can ask to be waitlisted for upgrade. The ability to waitlist was reported to have been removed in August 2016, but was again possible in September. Check with the agent - option available on May 2018.
- in case you requested to be waitlisted for upgrade and want to check if the customer care agent made the changes on your booking you can check the reservation on checkmytrip.com (click here), the leg you requested the upgrade will be shown here as ”Waitlisted”.
- If you wish to upgrade one segment of a multi-segment trip (e.g. XXX-ATH-YYY) and there is availability on the leg you wish to upgrade, you may still have to be waitlisted due to married segment issues. The process of clearing the waitlist is somewhat confusing and may result in frustration due to the availability seeming to disappear but in reality, this may mean that the segments have been "unmarried" and the availability has been allocated to your reservation. See post 2272 and the update in post 2294 for more details.
Benefits
- No matter what the fare basis of the original ticket, you receive full Business Class benefits after upgrade.
- This includes lounge access (useful if you're upgrading someone other than yourself who has no status, or if you've run out of Silver lounge vouchers) and full baggage allowance (it applies for first leg as well, in case you are upgraded only on the 2nd leg of your trip - confirmed on the etix).
- Because the ticket books as a redemption, the free car hire is not included.
Mileage/segment earning
- You will earn at the underlying rate of your purchased ticket in economy, not at a business class rate. Because status miles are awarded, this also counts as a segment for re-qualification purposes.
- The flights may credit automatically, but may take longer to credit than tickets that have not been changed. They may also credit as 0 miles, and later change to the correct rate. If the flights have not credited properly after a few weeks then calling A3 will rectify this rapidly.
Expiry
- The vouchers expire at the end of your membership year - they do not carry over, even if status is retained. A new set is issued every year.
- It is the date when you use the voucher that matters. It can upgrade a flight that takes place after expiry as long as you apply the voucher before.
- On upgrade from Silver to Gold, any remaining Silver upgrade coupons expire, but they are replaced by four Gold ones which expire at the end of the Gold membership year.
BEWARE
- Once you have upgraded your seat, your ticket will be reissued. Suddenly, this ticket may be VERY expensive to change. If, for instance, you later decide to travel on a different date, you will probably be required to rebook into Business, even if Economy was available for new bookings. A3 will charge you the difference from your original Economy fare to a NEW Business fare. Plus fees, taxes and whatnot. Update 18/08/2021: this appears to no longer be the case, as an upgraded ticket was changed and the underlying Economy fare was used for the upgraded segments. The coupon was "removed" from the old dates and "reapplied" to the new dates.
- Coupons will not be returned/reinstated. Once a coupon is applied, it is gone for good (the T&Cs printed on the coupons allow for date and time changes, but not route changes).
- If you want to provide your coupons to upgrade a friend's travel, it is advisable to call in yourself. Your friend can call in if they know your name, birthdate, M&B-number and the email address associated with your account. That means: Anyone who knows these particulars can use your coupons without your knowledge. They do NOT need the coupon numbers.
- Crediting upgraded segments to another program will likely fail, as it will be reported as I-class. It may be possible to retro-claim the miles.
Seat upgrade coupons
Apr 5, 2023, 1:06 pm
#2551
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Paris, France
Programs: A3*G, Accor ALL Gold
Posts: 597
Apr 6, 2023, 3:36 pm
#2552
Join Date: Apr 2023
Posts: 1
Silver Coupon Validity After Upgrade to Gold
Hi,
I am Aegean Silver will be upgraded to gold following my next flight later this month. I still have my 2 upgrade coupons from silver and they say they are valid till mid July. If I upgrade before then will these 2 coupons still be valid in addition to the 4 for gold. Its only a short flight next week so not worth upgrading but if they will be void after upgrade then no harm in using them. If anyone has any advice on what to do would be great.
Thanks
I am Aegean Silver will be upgraded to gold following my next flight later this month. I still have my 2 upgrade coupons from silver and they say they are valid till mid July. If I upgrade before then will these 2 coupons still be valid in addition to the 4 for gold. Its only a short flight next week so not worth upgrading but if they will be void after upgrade then no harm in using them. If anyone has any advice on what to do would be great.
Thanks
Apr 7, 2023, 12:25 am
#2553
Join Date: Jul 2022
Location: Brussels
Programs: Miles and Bonus
Posts: 84
The silver coupons will be void after your upgrade, so better do the request for the upgrade for your next flight - and also for this amazing answer - as you will still have one left unused, maybe kindly upgrade a random flyertalk member? 😁 )
Apr 7, 2023, 5:46 pm
#2554
Join Date: Nov 2016
Programs: Nectar Card
Posts: 1,093
Not OP, but just chiming in: I don't think I've ever been asked to pay a difference in taxes when upgraded? It's possible all my upgrades were ex-ATH, or countries which don't make a distinction in cabins when calculating departure taxes. Like Czechia?
Apr 8, 2023, 8:03 am
#2555
Join Date: Jan 2023
Posts: 169
For example, flights departing Heathrow definitely have difference in tax (Business vs Economy).
Apr 9, 2023, 2:47 am
#2557
Moderator: Aegean Miles+Bonus
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: AMS / ATH
Programs: AFKL Plat, A3 Gold
Posts: 7,343
I've booked an Economy flight and was upgraded straight away last night, first time in ages applying a coupon. Had checked with ExpertFlyer that I class was available for the flight prior to booking. Was directly upgraded during the call and new e-ticket was issued this morning. Also was happy to see I-class availability on the AMS route during height of summer!
Apr 10, 2023, 9:27 am
#2558
Join Date: Jul 2022
Location: Brussels
Programs: Miles and Bonus
Posts: 84
A data point that not sure if super helpful: on my flight last week, during boarding, two passengers in row 3 (Economy) kept mentioning to the cabin crew that they had an upgrade cleared but were still sat in Economy. Meanwhile the cabin crew were trying to find out if this was processed or not but they weren't able to confirm that. The purser went back to the two gentlemen and explained that they weren't seeing a confirmed (voucher) upgrade but only an upgrade of a row in Economy further back to row 3 though the two passengers still insisted on the Business Class upgrade. Apparently in the end, they were told 'there are still two empty seats in Business Class so you can take them' and they were moved forward after boarding has finished.
I wasn't convinced how legit that was but it seems that the purser might be able to process or look into the status of an upgrade while onboard. I'm pretty sure though that by the way this whole situation was handled, this was a gesture of good will by the purser rather than the two passengers using their upgrade coupons...
I wasn't convinced how legit that was but it seems that the purser might be able to process or look into the status of an upgrade while onboard. I'm pretty sure though that by the way this whole situation was handled, this was a gesture of good will by the purser rather than the two passengers using their upgrade coupons...
Apr 15, 2023, 10:50 pm
#2560
Join Date: Jul 2019
Posts: 1,326
Data point: Our upgrades (2 seats, both in the same booking, one gold, one blue) went through past midnight on the 3rd day prior to the flight (that was sometime between 66 and 63 hours prior to departure, I know for sure it wasn't processed at T-72h).
I know this, because even though no emails arrived, I noticed that in the "double booking", where the "business" part was wait-listed, we suddenly had seats reserved for us in business class, and availability of business class seats for sale went down (not by 2 btw but by 4, so probably 2 more got upgraded).
Anyway, as check-in opened the ticket still wasn't issued, so after waiting for a couple of hours I called and the agent confirmed that the upgrades had gone through and that it was just a matter of time ("a few hours, still today") until the emails came, which in fact they did just 10 minutes after we hung up (so I'm guessing she probably had something to do with accelerating the process).
Now for some reason I can't get the boarding passes to print in the A4 format (they won't even load at the end of Check-in no matter what I try) but the mobile ones will also work so whatever...
It's been a while since I got upgraded myself (last time about 20 months ago!) so that felt kind of nice.
On the other hand I noticed that they opened up I2 for the last unsold business class seats (the availability of I was also a confirmation to me, that our upgrades must have gone through) and this got me thinking, that I could have grabbed these and tried to move the paid tickets as far to the future as possible, where I isn't available, and save a good chunk of €€, but I decided against it this time.
I know this, because even though no emails arrived, I noticed that in the "double booking", where the "business" part was wait-listed, we suddenly had seats reserved for us in business class, and availability of business class seats for sale went down (not by 2 btw but by 4, so probably 2 more got upgraded).
Anyway, as check-in opened the ticket still wasn't issued, so after waiting for a couple of hours I called and the agent confirmed that the upgrades had gone through and that it was just a matter of time ("a few hours, still today") until the emails came, which in fact they did just 10 minutes after we hung up (so I'm guessing she probably had something to do with accelerating the process).
Now for some reason I can't get the boarding passes to print in the A4 format (they won't even load at the end of Check-in no matter what I try) but the mobile ones will also work so whatever...
It's been a while since I got upgraded myself (last time about 20 months ago!) so that felt kind of nice.
On the other hand I noticed that they opened up I2 for the last unsold business class seats (the availability of I was also a confirmation to me, that our upgrades must have gone through) and this got me thinking, that I could have grabbed these and tried to move the paid tickets as far to the future as possible, where I isn't available, and save a good chunk of €€, but I decided against it this time.
Apr 16, 2023, 3:41 pm
#2561
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: United Kingdom
Programs: A3 *G; Honors Gold; Marriott Bonvoy Gold Elite; IHG Diamond;
Posts: 136
Last year I had the leg MAN->ATH->SKG->LCA (same booking ref) and LCA->ATH->MAN (another set of same booking ref). MAN -> ATH, SKG->LCA and ATH->MAN are successful to use coupons. However, the ticket in the leg of SKG->LCA and ATH->MAN cannot be issued. I need to ask the depature hall check-in counter in ATH and SKG to issue ATH->MAN and SKG->LCA respectively. It is not sure due to upgrade business or purely Schengen and non-Schengen common issue.
Apr 17, 2023, 1:56 am
#2562
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: SOF
Programs: A3 Gold, IHG Platinum, Marriott Silver
Posts: 849
Upgrade Challenge vs. Coupon Upgrades
I tried to search for this but couldn't find any useful information. I'm waitlisted on 2 flights for Business class upgrade with coupons. I was wondering if those will be processed before or after any potential bids made. It seems that at least on one of the days, Business Class may be full as they are not selling any more tickets, so it'd be nice to know how this works if anyone knows. I couldn't find the answer in the wiki of the thread. Appreciate your input.
Apr 17, 2023, 2:42 am
#2563
Join Date: Apr 2019
Location: London
Posts: 192
I tried to search for this but couldn't find any useful information. I'm waitlisted on 2 flights for Business class upgrade with coupons. I was wondering if those will be processed before or after any potential bids made. It seems that at least on one of the days, Business Class may be full as they are not selling any more tickets, so it'd be nice to know how this works if anyone knows. I couldn't find the answer in the wiki of the thread. Appreciate your input.
Apr 18, 2023, 2:41 pm
#2565
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: SOF
Programs: A3 Gold, IHG Platinum, Marriott Silver
Posts: 849