Paid Upgrade Business (Affaires) to First (La Premiere)?
 

I am currently booked in business from BUD-CDG-ATL on a Delta award booking on 9/3/19 and am curious if AF ever offers paid upgrades from Affaires to La Premiere on the Trans Atlantic flight, and if so what I might expect the cost to be, if available. I understand AF688 is A380 and La Premiere not as private as 777, but if the price was right, I might purchase the upgrade. If available, would this be offered at online check-in twenty four hours out, or would it need to happen at the BUD airport? Thank you for your insight.

Are you able to change your ticket from J to P? I sometimes pay to change my W tickets to J (company only pays for Y or W) and the prices are not dissimilar to some of the upgrade offers that I have received at OLCI. XP are also given for changes in ticket class purchased in this way but not for upgrades.

PeteM01, I am currently on an award ticket with Delta, so I'm not able to change the ticket, but I will certainly look for the upgrade possibility at the OLCI time (thank you Goldorak).

Are award tickets eligible for paid upgrades?? [Never-mind, I see that they are here in the footnotes, for last-minute/on-board, assuming the DL award ticketed is issued for an AF-marketed flight.]

There is a master thread in this forum about paid upgrades; while it's mostly about upgrades to PE or J, there are some specific data points in there about J-to-F upgrades, but Goldorak's post sums it up nicely.

I have done this often on AF688/689. It has always been 1400E. They have offered it on every flight that had a seat available, but at the airport for me (DL ticketed.)

As a follow up, at the Air France check-in counter in Budapest, we were offered a paid upgrade to La Premiere at $2400 Euro per person. Seemed a bit steep, so we kept our Affaire seats.

I know that this is not strictly relevant to the OP, but I have just upgraded a paid J ticket (subclass Z, a so-called 'promotional fare') to La P (subclass F), MAN-CDG-SIN for just over £1000, one way. I did this through the Platinum Service Line, who waived the ticket change fee as I made the booking and the upgrade during the same call. This price is considerably less than the last offer that I received for an OLCI J-P upgrade (~£1500, if I remember correctly), which comes with no extra XP. Somewhat excited for this birthday treat in 2020!

it was about $1700 for a CDG-SFO leg for me. Upgrade done in the lounge.

Mileage credit for paid upgrade on an award ticket?
 

I booked an award in Business and then did a paid upgrade to La Premiere SFO-CDG. Does anyone know if I'll get AF FB mileage credit for my flight?

No, you'll get neither miles nor XPs. Zero.

Anybody has experience with upgrading a DL marketed / AF operated flight from J to P?

Sjondorn - I believe i just did this last week.

First, belated thanks for this thread, and the many helpful contributors. It was super helpful before I chose the paid upgrade offer from Affaires to La Premiere last week.

Trip basis:
) Bought SFO-CDG-SFO as one PNR, and I also had bought CDG-VIE-CDG as a separate PNR - I had them merge them at SFO
) Fare basis was Z and cost was $2100 USD for SFO-CDG-SFO
) SFO-CDG-SFO (bought at Delta.com) was ticketed as DL 8599 outbound on Dec 25, DL 8552 inbound on Dec 29
) I have an Air France/Flying Blue login (no status) and I am a Delta Gold

What I did:
) Checked in through AF website - not Delta - at about 29 hours before departure (lead time would not have mattered for La Premiere - I ended up the only pax in La Premiere - but I'm fairly certain the La Premiere offer would only ever happen through airfrance.com or at the airport possibly)
) Was offered La Premiere for $2500 USD plus tax - it's a chunk of change - but I had planned for this, so I bought it and it was so worth it
) Put payment through on Amex Plat for 5x points, and got boarding pass back for La Premiere

I won't bore you with all my trip details - aviation bloggers like Sam Chui and Jayme Drummond, among others, have done wonderful reviews of the Air France La Premiere experience. It certainly made for a special Christmas evening. The entire experience was incredibly elevated, the dinner onboard was easily the best meal I have had anywhere in the world in my entire life, impeccable service throughout, and La Salon Premiere at CDG was calm and peaceful and really lovely for the holidays.

I don't need to experience La Premiere again soon ($2500 is a lot of money for many Americans) but I'm really grateful I had the experience.

So you went to SFO ahead of the check-in time to merge the itineraries? interesting. Glad you had a great experience!

Very happy you are thrilled by the experience. One has to indulge in irrational luxury once in a while, especially for special Christmas.

Was the $2,500 one-way from SFO?
Of course, dinner is only part of the experience, but for $1,000 you can get a much better meal and wines in a great many restaurants throughout the world :)