General experience with eUpgrading to PY
 

I would like to try and manage smartly my eUp credits for the rest of the year. As such I am curious to hear what is the general feeling regarding the success rate for eUpgrading to PY on intl routes. I'm not asking about specific dates, I'm just after a general opinion about which routes can be harder to eUp, which ones seem easier, any difference on the outbound vs inbound and so on, TATL being especially of interest. Of course I am also aware that load factors can vary widely depending on the time of the year.

My experience so far this year is that it has generally been (nearly) as cheap (or cheaper) to buy PY than to buy Flex. :)

YYZ->LHR PY is often $25-$100 more.
LHR->YYZ PY is normally at least $300 more.

Main reason for this, I believe, is UK (and esp.) LHR departure taxes which go up and up as fares increase. So depends where you want to go to/from.

I don't fly TATL nearly enough to make a definitive comment, but I was sat next to a non-status person at Christmas who must have been upgraded due to a lack of people interested in using eUps or LMU'ing. And J was full, if relevant.

This.

It boggles my mind that anybody would want to waste eUps on a product that is often available (if you book early) for about the same price as the fare required to upgrade.

Some corporate travel policies require Y fares regardless of price, but agree doesn't make sense for small incremental cost difference on many routes.

Regarding success I would expect many that purchase PY would be trying to upgrade to J which should provide some opportunities even on full flights.

Sometimes you cannot buy early enough, and sometimes the difference between PY and Flex is large. Also, many of us are not SE and hence cannot upgrade to J without paying through the nose. Can we stick to the OP's question -how easy / feasible it is to upgrade to PY- in which I'm also interested?

Sounds like it's time to start a corporate travel service that leverages this lameness. Seems easy with basic data science techniques and access to data.

That's exactly it. My employer does not pay for anything above Flex, most of my travel is booked a few weeks in advance at most and I don't travel much domestically or TB. Therefore, year after year I waste dozens of eUp credits because of co-pay. PY offers me the possibility of burning these credits while improving my travel experience. So, any comments regarding eUpping to PY is appreciated because that's all I can do with these credits and I am certainly not the only one in this situation.

To answer your question, usually lots of people try upgrading from PE to J, so if J isn't full, those seats open up for people in Y looking for PE. I have never used eUpgrades for this purpose but have flown PY numerous times when the cabin showed several (or more) empty seats prior to check-in but ended up full - presumably as a result of eUps.

Flying YVR - LHR and vice versa I've had decent success upgrading to PY.
4/5 in the last year.

This is correct. It is one of the problems of PY in that the UK taxes are set at two price levels and divided between lowest class of service on an aircraft (Y) and not lowest class (F/J/PY). Thus - you pay the same crazy long-haul premium tax for PY as you do for a BA First class. . . . .

Probably because they want to tax the rich. Or at least the "not poor".

If you're flying above Y, you're "not poor" :p

Actually LHR charges are less for PY than J.

Arbitrary date in future:

T : $381
Y : $396
P(Y) : $531
J : $725

Oh and it's $237 taxes on the way out. Or $465 in J.
Go figure why tango is $15 cheaper than Flex/Lat.