TheCanuckian

Many of the people who frequent this forum have more eUpgrade credits than we can use. If that’s true of most years, it’s perhaps especially true in 2022. I have often wanted to share some credits with others rather than see them expire at the end of the year. That is the purpose of this thread—using eUpgrade credits to attempt to upgrade other members of this community. (Thanks to Adam Smith for helping me think it through.)

A few ground rules:

• this thread is for offering to upgrade a fellow passenger, not for requesting an upgrade from a fellow passenger
• this thread is for upgrading a fellow passenger as a gift, not for any kind of compensation or tit-for-tat
• this thread is for offering to upgrade a passenger on a one-off basis, not making them an eUpgrade Nominee

And then a few reminders about how eUpgrades work:

• only one passenger can be upgraded
• the upgrade must be requested at the airport on the day of travel
• the Basic fare class is not eligible to be upgraded
• depending on the fare class, there may be add-on fees that need to be paid (by the beneficiary of the gift, of course)
• Consult this document for information on the number of credits (and add-on fees) needed to upgrade; consult this page for general information about eUpgrades; go to the My Bookings page to see what fare you have purchased

If you find a match, I would propose you communicate via PM and arrange when and where you will meet to make the request (and potentially pay the add-on fee). Upgrade requests cannot be made anonymously, so you will eventually need to divulge some personal information to the person attempting to upgrade you.

I would propose we use a common format to offer an upgrade. We can do some back-and-forth on this, but I’d propose this format:

• Flight | Origin-Destination | Date | Additional info

So that might lead to something like this:

• AC 854 | YYZ-LHR | June 13

Or, if there are certain restrictions, you may do something like this:

• AC 854 | YYZ-LHR | June 13 | upgrade to PY only
• AC 854 | YYZ-LHR | June 13 | Flex or Latitude fares only
• AC 854 | YYZ-LHR | June 13 | up to 18 credits, no add-on fees

We can probably be creative with the "additional information" and see how it goes.

I expect we will see the bulk of the action in this thread toward the end of the calendar year as credits near expiry, but perhaps we can work out the bugs before then. Have at it!

Adam Smith

Someone reminded me that we have an existing thread in a similar vein, but I like the structure @TheCanuckian has put in to the OP here, and also recognizing the feedback the moderators have gotten around long-running threads, we'll let that 10-year-old thread die off and use this one going forward.

canadiancow

Given my eUp situation this year, I feel like I should just throw my entire set of planned flights into a wiki

Does anyone actually have experience with paying add-ons when requesting a day of departure upgrade?

I once added a friend to the list for YYZ-SFO. He was on a standard fare. I made it explicitly clear, in writing, to the concierge, that I wanted him on the PY list. They put him on the J list. Luckily he only cleared into PY, but I've seen AC come after the sponsor after the fact for failing to pay an add-on. This can also happen if the credit card is declined. So there is a bit of risk here.

Due to things like this, my personal rule for any offers I make would be that your fare must require no add-on when the upgrade is requested by a SE.

Anyway, back to my first statement... would a wiki be useful? I might know I'm 100% taking a flight in November, but if I post it here now, it'll get buried. Whereas a wiki can be nice and chronological.

mahasamatman

A Wiki definitely sounds like the way to go. The only things you lose are notifications and thread ordering on the main page, neither or which is that important IMO.

asovse1

Yeah, at the MLL (and I assume at any Air Canada check-in desk at airports where they operate with a large presence AND their allocated gates) they whip out this really sketchy ID card scanner and ask for your credit card to authorize when requesting an upgrade at the airport. Your eUp dashboard is updated to indicate that $XXX.XX funds are held, although I didn't check whether this is a held/pending transaction on my credit card itself in case the upgrade fails. The charge is posted days later.

EDIT: I had a friend do DEL-YVR a few months back who had to rectify a bag charge because they were changing their FFP at the gate. There was no way for them to resolve the now-outstanding bag fees by switching to a non *G FFP, simply because the gate did not have a credit card scanner. I have no idea if you could even get on the waitlist at this point if you had a co-pay to authorize onto a credit card. Maybe this is why AC will invoice you after the fact, like your friend.

@@@@@@@@@@@

I'd also like to share an edge case that might benefit nobody here but might be interesting in terms of supplementing knowledge to the context of this thread.

My sister and I had a really petty argument and thus I couldn't stand sitting next to her for seven hours in PY. So I went to the MLL and asked to upgrade her, and only her, to J, co-pay and all. They didn't ask for her consent to verify ("oh wow you're such a good brother!!!", "I wish my brother was that nice to me!!!"). We did the whole credit card thing above, I reiterated that I wanted to remain in PY, and she ended up being the only one on the waitlist.

My takeaways:
1) you can upgrade anybody, as long as you have their name (and seat number? idk), without them knowing
2) you don't need to move or upgrade yourself as a result

canadiancow

I definitely knew number 2.

Number 1 is the same for everything. User-facing systems generally require booking reference and last name, but agents can pull up a flight and grab a passenger by their name.

YVR4Ever

Recent DP: I upgraded a colleague both ways from YYZ-VIE. I requested the first leg at the concierge office at YVR. They were unable to process the upgrade for some reason, but were able to call someone at YYZ to do it. On the return, the check in agents at VIE couldn't process e-upgrades at all, claiming they can only do cash upgrades. I called the concierge line and they were able to sort it out. I wasn't asked to pay the add on fee in either case. They upgrade was PY to J.

The fee was waived either because I am SE, and therefore my rules applied, or as a favour due to glitch. I'm not sure which.

gcashin

As someone with a measly 1 eupgrade left in my account, I like the idea of a wiki if there's an FTer on my flight who is flush with eupgrades!

canadiancow

You're SE. You don't pay add-ons for PY to J.

TheCanuckian

I think a wiki would make good sense. As people add to it, then can also then remove dates that have come and gone. That will make it very easy to see what's on offer.

I guess a wiki entry would be similar to the suggested flight (AC 854 | YYZ-LHR | June 13) but also with the username accompanying it.

canadiancow

I made a wiki. I basically just copied the instructions from your initial post, add the username field, and put in two that I might be able to do later in the year.

Adam Smith

I thought you were going to stop flying AC because of all the promos?

I've only done this thrice. The first time, the concierge made me give my credit card number when requesting the upgrade. I was told that was the only way to do it.

The second time, I was told there was no co-pay, even though I had expected there to be one. It's possible he would have been hit with that co-pay at the gate or it would have come back to me, I'm not sure. Unfortunately he ended up misconnecting and missing the flight, so we never found out.

​​​​​​​The third time, we ran in to all sorts of issues with the co-pay. Also I had forgotten that two people can't sponsor upgrades on the same PNR and this FTer already had upgrades cleared on subsequent legs. But I think the co-pay caused problems first. I mention this because it was the same flight as the second time (after the first guy misconnected, I offered to upgrade a different FTer who was also on the flight), and I believe it was the same fare.
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I think it's okay if people post when they've added flights to the wiki. We don't want pure thread bumping (not permitted), but if you've added flights to the wiki, you have contributed new information to the thread.

YOWgary

AC 33, YVR-SYD, tonight (June 12)

I'm only offering eUps, for one person, any co-pay is your responsibility. First come, first served.

Flight is currently J4 O7, with only one person waitlisted for PE, so your odds of at least PE would be decent.

SKYEG

I put up my dates for PHX-YYZ-PHX. I haven't used any eups so I'll have enough for the cheaper fares with add on, if required. Both flights are J9 R5 as of today. Will unfortunately have to upgrade for you same day at airport as I'm not SE.

AC 1286 PHX-YYZ | July 10 2022 | SKYEG | any fare without an add-on or you pay the add on fee.
AC 1287 YYZ-PHX | July 14 2022 | SKYEG | any fare without an add-on or you pay the add on fee.

TheCanuckian

With the end of the calendar year approaching and a host of eupgrade credits due to expire, I thought it would be worth reminding people of this thread. If you've got credits that will go to waste, why not offer to upgrade someone?

And to that end:

AC 123 | YYZ-YVR | November 4, 2022 | any fare without an add-on or you pay the fee