AfricatoUKUKtoAfrica

Hi there,

Does anyone know if I can use my Agean airmiles to secure an upgrade on an Ethiopian economy fare?

Flying from Addis Ababa to the UK...

I can't seem to find out the information anywhere - has anyone had any experience using their Agean miles for partner airline class upgrades?

Thanks

CesarFrancq

In the "terms and conditions", under "CHAPTER 6: AEGEAN PARTNERSHIP WITH AIRLINE COMPANIES-MEMBERS OF STAR ALLIANCE", you will find a table that shows which economy booking classes you can upgrade to business. In the case of Ethiopian, only booking classes Y, B, G, S allow you to do this. From the "How to spend - seat upgrade" table, you can see that from one of these booking classes, you will need 50'000 miles to upgrade a trip from Central Africa to Europe (one way).

Stewie Mac

And surely this is a real sour spot in Aegean, given that a one-way biz award for the same flight (Africa-Europe) would be 55.000 miles

AfricatoUKUKtoAfrica

Thanks for such a prompt and informative response!

AlwaysFlyStar

Yeah... I just noticed that the other day. What is up with those redemption rates? It seems most are nearly the same as a reservation. Do we think this will change? Surely nobody will redeem them for upgrades when an outright redemption (in C or F) is not much more...

Air Rarotonga

The *A upgrades are with all partners only possible from the highest few booking classes... And the rates were very high to upgrade... Nothing special...

jbfield

I know non-savy colleagues who have done this - I suspect because their employer has purchased them a full fare ticket and they used their own miles to upgrade.

I regard this as non-savy though as if you need to fly C or F then your employer should be footing that bill themselves rather than you.

Xandrios

How does being savy make your boss sign off on premium cabin tickets though?

If the company policy is to book Economy then there often is not much one can do about that. If the company is already buying fully flexible economy tickets, upgrading to fully flexible business tickets would double the price (or more). Few people can convince their boss that flying business would be worth that extra investment..

If you would have some compelling arguments I'd love to hear them (Yes I'm also stuck in economy, even long-haul)

jbfield

It's more that this company has a policy for long-haul travel that used to be in Business Class anyway (now the policy is one cabin above Economy, which is still business class for some airlines but Premium Economy on others) but their boss wants to increase the margins on their project.

The non-savy element is two-fold:
1) It will encourage their boss to take this stance on future journeys (rather than budget for them properly)

and

2) It seems perverse to use (nearly) the same amount of miles that would get you a Business Class redemption ticket for your own leisure trip, on a journey your employer wants you to make in a class of travel they don't want to (but could) pay for. Put another way, you are trading:
1x Work Trip in Economy + 1x Leisure Trip in Business
for
1x Work Trip in Business + 1x Leisure Trip in Economy.
(ideally though you want both flights to be in Business)

In my opinion, if an employer wants an employee to arrive refreshed [after my flight on Ethiopian Airlines] and able to function normally when they land they shouldn't expect the employee to pay for it (in time or currency).

I agree though - getting the approval is another matter ...I suppose it's about what money has been put into the original project budget and the trade-off/value gained for the boss (rather than the business as a whole) in their employee travelling in business class.


Back to the OPs question, sorry, no experience of using Aegean miles for partner airline class upgrades, but it will likely be part of the standard StarAlliance-wide upgrade scheme (http://www.staralliance.com/en/benef.../?tab=tabThree) that requires reward-class availability in the cabin you are trying to upgrade to. I've seen it promoted quite a bite by StarAlliance recently which leads me to think there's something in it for the airlines...

NWIFlyer

All,

We are experiencing some very significant topic drift here - please let's try and stay a little closer to the OP's original question about upgrading on ET ...

Thanks
NWIFlyer
Moderator

KL808

Sorry to bring this thread back from the dead.

Quick question if I did book in Y / B / G / S Economy class is the upgrade automatic if there are a ton of seats available for purchase in business class? or does there need to be "I" class available, the award class for business, for that specific flight?

Thanks

irishguy28

It's not enough that there are "tons" of seats available for purchase....upgrades require specific upgrade availability, and cannot simply be processed to book you into any available "cash" seat. To process an upgrade, there has to be an open seat in the relevant booking class that is available for Aegean. I would caution that, unless you can see that a seat is available for purchase outright using miles in A3 Miles and Bonus, that there probably isn't a seat available for them to upgrade you into using miles (even if searching via some other airline's programme appears to indicate that that other airline sees availability).

Looking up how many seats ET is willing to sell for money is not relevant. It's probably more relevant to see if A3 can "sell" you a business class seat on the particular flight in question using Miles, to try and determine that they have access to a seat which you could then instead request for an upgrade. But I cannot guarantee you that even if they could "sell" you such a J award, that they could actually process an upgrade into that available space.

Redeeming outright into business is always a better use of miles. Between factoring in the (high) cost of an economy ticket in the relevant high-fare classes, and the (high) cost of miles required to process an upgrade, together with the uncertainty of whether you will actually be able to get the desired upgrade - it is a far, far better use of your time, money and miles to instead redeem outright into J, rather than rolling the dice and hoping that an upgrade is, or will become, available once you have purchased a more-expensive-than-otherwise-necessary economy class ticket. Using miles for an upgrade really only makes sense if you, due to work or other commitments, find that you already have a high-fare Y-class ticket that could be upgradeable. It is never advisable to specifically book such a Y-class ticket when your actual goal is to travel in the J cabin You may end up paying far more than you needed to to get an economy class ticket, and you may end up flying in economy, rather than in business as you actually wanted.