yang1900

yang1900

acoburn73

Any EXPs ever get bumped from Premium Economy to Biz on BA direct flights from US to LHR lately? I'm heading out Friday on direct 747 from DEN to LHR (then later to TLV) and was told I could use 12,500 AAdvantage miles, but only at the airport if there are upgrade seats available and no Avios members requested first. Or I could pony up $3060 one way to upgrade (ha!). Was curious if BA ever just bumps Oneworld Emerald members from Prem Econ to business for the hell of it, or to free up premium seats (they are all booked), or do they only do that with their Avios members?

JJeffrey

Who was telling you this?!

You can upgrade from Premium Econ to Business on BA for 12,500 AA miles, that is correct, however you cannot do this at the airport (you need to call AA) and you must be booked in a full fare W fare basis.

And I'm not aware of any full service major airline that just upgrades elites or any pax just for the hell of it. The only chance you have is if the flight is oversold in PE.

acoburn73

AA EXP desk rep said nope - can't do it on a BA flight unless it was on AA ticket stock (it was bought through my company-required "MyTrip", better known as AMEX "Get There").

Called BA - they said pay $3000+ to get it, or ask to use AAdvantage miles (12,500) at airport.

Now I'm wondering if there are any Emeralds that have had the surprise of getting bumped to biz class from premium, sort of like an "op-up", just because the airline wanted to move people out of economy/premium due to overbooking. Or just for the random loyalty perk.

JJeffrey

Gotcha. Yea, the BA rep was wrong, there's no mechanism to use AA miles to upgrade on BA at the airport or anything like that.

If PE is overbooked then as an Emerald you certainly have a chance of an op-up if BA needs to move pax from PE to business to make room. As an EXP I've received several op-up's on BA over the years, mostly from coach to business on short-haul Europe flights when coach is oversold. However if PE is not overbooked then you don't have a chance, as mentioned there's not an airline in the world that just regularly/consistently upgrades pax to long-haul business for free as a random loyalty perk.

acoburn73

No chance then - just checked ExpertFlyer and there are still 10 open seats in PE, with coach barely 30% full, and business with only a few seats filled on the lower deck (upper deck, which always fills first due to the "private jet" feel, even has 4 open seats). Looking like a weak flight, but I'll still give it a shot at the airport and will probably give AA EXP desk one more call this week just to check in on options.

Thanks!

aztimm

If you have any BA Avios (what they call miles), you should be able to upgrade with those, in advance, by phone.

Otherwise, at the airport BA seems to always have upgrades available for a fee. When I flew AUS-LHR-PVG last year, I think they wanted $700 or $800 for the AUS-LHR leg (from PE to business). I think it was about $100 more for the other leg. You can ask at check-in or at the gate. If there's a BA lounge, they can also take care of it, but not an AA lounge.

acoburn73

No Avios here - all AA miles.

I've used the at-the-airport upgrade with BA at LHR. Paid I believe $850 in 2017 as a Sapphire. I'll probably ask this weekend, but likely won't go for it for a 9 hour flight when I have an 11-hour layover at LHR and have already booked a sleeping pod for 9 hours at No 1 Lounge in Terminal 3. I can stay up until what would be 3 am Colorado time as long as they have updated their entertainment line up and keep bringing me wine and grub if it means I only spend $200 for a 9-hour sleeping/shower pod at LHR (and I can justify this on expense report as hotel and not try to explain a business class upgrade for $800!).

Thanks for the replies.

adunker

Nope, no SWU requested or taken from me. I still have all 4 for this year.

Biggie Fries

Back in Novemer I booked PE RT flights (2 passengers) to (and from) Europe, for March 2019. At the time I called in and asked to be put on the upgrade list for J, for the trip to Europe, for both seats, using miles plus money (I think $350 + 25,000 miles per ticket).

Last week -- Thursday -- I did a new-year check of reservations. This particular reservation had a bunch of "need to contact AA" stuff on it; I could not check seat assignments, for example. I was seized with a mix of trepidation (had something gone wrong with the reservations? [it was a darned good fare]) and hope against hope (could it be that they were actually going to upgrade us, and this far out?) I called in and to my excitement heard the question, "Hmm... Could you have requested an upgrade?"

"Yes!" As often seems (at least to me) to be the case in these situations, getting the upgrade put through was a long process. It seems that whoever put through the initial request in November had put it in for both legs, and somehow that was keeping them from upgrading automatically now that the outbound leg -- the leg I really wanted -- had seats for upgrading. I was put on hold for a long time; fortunately, earlier in the week, I had picked up a newspaper and learned that there are worse things in the world than waiting on hold while you are upgraded to business class for a transatlantic airplane flight (I had had no idea!), so I soldiered through it. When the AA CSR came back on, she took my credit card info again (I did decided to put it on a different card), asked me which account the miles were coming from, and put the whole thing through. When she said it was done, I checked the reservation at aa.com, and indeed we were (are) now upgraded on the leg going over. Everything else looks right. Same original PE fare, same seats on return, us in the J seats we like on the way out. The ticket shows as "ticketed," although the ticketing date remains in November, not last week.

Which is the problem (or is it?): No miles have been deducted (I checked both passenger accounts). Nothing is pending on the new credit card I gave (nor is anything pending on the original credit card I switched off from). Swell if for some chance they were going to give us the upgrade for free, but at what point does "watchful waiting" raise the chances that we get inadvertently kicked out of the seats to which we seem to have been upgraded now?

Finsup72

Yes, I had an op-up last year from LHR-IAD. Granted I was booked in full-fare PE (W) and PE was completely sold-out. I checked-in on the app and everything was still showing PE. I refreshed the app on my way to LHR and saw I had a new seat in business.

redtop43

All airlines will give the occasional complimentary upgrade for operational issues (hence why it's called an "Op-Up.") Usually when lower cabins are overbooked, and usually but not always by status. Last year I was upgraded from Y to F on a trip because, as the GA told me, "We were oversold by 7 in coach and undersold by 5 in first" and two people got vouchers for giving up their seats.

Some years ago, the ex-Mrs. Redtop was upgraded from PE to J when flying JFK-CDG. She had no status, the Y ticket had been purchased normally and then upgraded to PE for somewhere around $120.

But nobody says "We have extra premium seats, let's give them out." It doesn't happen. They will give them to non-revs or let them go empty. They want pax to pay for them, which is not insensible.

gcsmith

They do. Happened to me last year (premium econ to business) going from LHR to DFW. Happened at the gate when I handed my ticket over for boarding.

Stripe

Be careful drawing conclusions from a BA seat map, especially over 72 hours out. Only OW Emeralds and folks willing to pay extra get seat assignments in advance, even in business class. OW Sapphires can reserve at T-72 and everyone else at check-in.