agnivarsh

For flights between seattle and Hawaii - does anyone know how the premium class upgrade pricing works?
I see the upgrade prices go down as the day of travel nears (going from over $100 down to the 60s). How does this work? Are there specific timelines when Alaska drops the prices? Or is it based on availability of seats? If it is time based, would it be cheapest to upgrade at the airport?
Curious if there are specific tiers of pricing.

pcoll

My experience with this is... it can be all over the place. When the price is good, go for it.
I ended up paying more by waiting to decide.
Booked flights for OGG last December. Flights in July. At time of booking, PC was $109.
By the time decision to upgrade was made, outbound was 139 and inbound was 119. It has gone to 129 each way and now up to 149 each way. PC is almost filled with a few middle seats open.
Not sure if those are a party of two who chose aisle and window , hoping middle will be kept open. They May end up with stranger in middle seat. 🙄
interesting, elite or full fare seats not taken, at all, on both flights.

UAPremierExec

SEA/JNU before 24 hours was only $14 more for my partner. At check-in it jumped to $34.99.

beckoa

Agree its a bit like popcorn. Price can go up or down- for similar flights. Glad I don't pay for PC.

westcoastflyer_

esp on morning flights to hawaii there will be more mvps who can move into premium 48 hrs before departure so don't be surprised if premium starts to disappear

agnivarsh

Thank you. So looks like some sort of dynamic demand/supply algorithm than any standard tiering.

Tack

It’s exactly that. YM controls the pricing on it just like any other seat. Before I retired from AS they actually had a dedicated group that focused on just PC, as the yield from those seats is almost pure profit and the stated goal was to maneuver pricing to ensure that it maximizes $. I’ve been gone about 3 years now, but through the employee portal, they say they still have a robust program to squeeze every penny from that class. As flights get busier, they’ve gone to offering PC with open center seats, it restricts an already small supply and allows them to raise the premium they can drive by offering a bit more comfort/distance from your neighbor. Like anything an airline offers, when you see a price that works for you, grab it. Because before departure they’ll find a way to get whatever they can for that product/service and lately that means it’ll cost more day of departure.

mtofell

Great info.... just curious if you have a ballpark idea what % of people in PC pay vs. how many were upgraded as MVP, etc.?

eponymous_coward

LOL, my Fortune 500 company would yeet me into the sun if I disclosed confidential sales information on a public forum. Even if I was retired it would probably be a violation of my NDA. Might as well send it as an email to UA/DL/AA revenue management.

Usually stuff like that gets left to the quarterly investor conferences so the CFO says exactly what they want public... and not a darn thing more.

jpdx

Might be interesting to collect some data points in a wiki. I'm looking at a PDX-HNL with premium class costing $109, and the return to PDX is $55. The latter seems like a decent deal for someone without status, but the former works out to only ~$150 less than discounted First.

anteater

I don't recall specific data points, but I do recall seeing Hawaii bound flights with varying E+ buyup offers from $99 - $149; though, I never needed it as a 75K. I recently had to book a separate itinerary for an HNL flight for May for a family member and the buyup offer was $69 and $79 per leg, a very good value IMO.

pcoll

Our trip to Maui is in July and is an extended family trip.
Tickets for Daughter and her family were purchased with Companion Codes. Since they have no status, decided to upgrade them to PC, as it is a very long flight for 2 young children. PC Upgrades seem like a good value when using CC for Main Cabin fares.
So, paid PC upgrades for 4 X 2.
First Class is $969 OW now and Main is $369 OW. Saver is N/A.
And yes, We are in FC. Fares were much more reasonable in December , $549 OW. Was counting on 75% bonus for those miles. (Hopefully, can request retro credit after the fact)

ISTFlyer

IAD-LAX which is double the length of this flight was $108 before OLCI, $89 during OLCI.
Discounted First Class upgrade offer was $213.40 both at OLCI and at the airport.

I had an exit row seat on a 737-900ER and with the middle seat unoccupied ( by chance ), I'm glad I didn't pay for an upgrade.

philemer

In general, why would people pay more than a $100 for a crappy seat with 3" or 4" of extra legroom? I've had the opportunity many time of HI flts but would rather use that $$ for a fancy dinner or top shelf booze after we land. Now, if you have loooooong legs I could see it.

Tack

I don’t and the reason I don’t is because they know employees and retirees blab, as I have, so they won’t post that type of propriety info.
I’m now self employed, running my own company. I don’t use any of my airline benies so I can afford to roll the dice and share what I read. I’ll always be more loyal to AS then they ever were to employees during my 36 years there. But that’s a topic for another day. Cheers.