jamienbaker

LHRVCE, I'm Gold booked J, wife is status-less, flying Y.

Ticketed through AA, trip originates in NYC.

Neither AA or BA points can be applied to upgrade her (once again proving how alliances over promise and under deliver, but I digress).

Avios award in J available for 15,000, which I'm willing to spend. But AA will cancel downstream segments if she doesn't show for Y segment.

I assume my only course of action is to give my J seat to the stranger in Y seated next to wife, so that she and I can sit together.

Any strategy I'm overlooking?

dh01

Put your wife in your J seat and you sit in the back....

jamienbaker

If the hard product was sufficiently differentiated I would. But in this case it is not. So the shared goal is to sit with one another. Pending a last minute AA upgrade JFKLHR, she'll be taking my F seat and I'll potentially have a row in Y to myself. So I can't be accused of being callous.

irishguy28

Hang on - so you're booked in F transatlantic, and in J on LHRVCE, while your wife holds a Y ticket for both flights?

trueblu

I think if you want to sit together, it will be in Y. You could ask check-in to do this I guess, since they may look sympathetically on you and give you two nice Y seats (e.g. exit row).

I'm not sure where AA or BA has 'over-promised but under-delivered' here. Presumably, she is in a paid Y fare which is not YBH fare class, in which case it cannot be upgraded, as per clearly written and published rules.

It's not a long flight: wife, daughter and I did it last year, and it was absolutely fine in Y. Happy flying.

tb

wyvern

Ask at the transfer desk if a paid upgrade on LHR-VCE is available. They are often available on this route on BA-ticketed stock - I don't know how it works on AA-ticketed stock though - it might be worth checking in BA's manage my booking the the BA PNR 72, 48 and 24 hours before the LHR-VCE flight departs to see if a paid upgrade is being offered to you online.

The proactive paid upgrades work out at about £65 if available (much less than the fare difference to the higher class - and you get the miles and tier points for business).

If you ask nicely at the transfer desk, at the lounge or at a BA check-in counter if either a paid upgrade is available or if you can downgrade so you can sit together, there is the faintest chance that you get the unspoken third possibility - you both get to sit up front.

OW should or at least BA/AA/IB should really address the points upgrade issue when ticketed on one carrier and on another carrier's metal. *A upgrade awards shows how it could be done - though there not all *A carriers participate and those that do place restrictions on the awards redeemable.

Slightly OT but on a similar note, with the changes to the BA/QF JSA and codeshare arrangements this year, SYD-HKG-LHR will no longer be available on QF all the way through, and neither will LHR-BKK-SYD on BA or SYD/MEL-BKK-LHR on QF. This is going to mean that only the single BA and single QF flights via SIN are available for points upgrades, unless a change is made to the JSA to allow cross-carrier upgrades. This is going to reduce points upgrade availability and deplete the travel experience unless a change is made to the JSA to accommodate both BA and QF passengers upgrading with miles on routes where half the flight is on the other carrier's metal.

MSPeconomist

Why in the world did the OP get a F/J ticket for himself and buy a cheap Y ticket for the wife if they want to sit together or even stay married? Was he hoping to get some agent to give him an illegal upgrade for his wife out of sympathy or something?

jamienbaker

Correct. Trying to apply an AA SWU to outbound to get her in J, in which case I'll downgrade myself to J. Return not an issue, we are coming back separately.

irishguy28

Wow

Maybe buying two J tickets would have been easier than starting from an F and a Y and trying to meet somewhere in the middle...

jamienbaker

With all due respect, why do you care and what guidance does your post provide? Fine. I'll bite. My employer is flying me to Europe. Paid J. I upgraded self to F. For the weekend portion, my wife is coming along. I bought an inexpensive Y ticket. She's already upgraded to J on the return TATL segment (while I remain in Europe). She will hopefully be upgraded to J on the outbound, but if not I'm happy to swap seats with her. After all, I have BA 1K to look forward to later in the week. And Im not looking for anything illegal, though I'm glad I posted given paid upgrade idea is a good one.

trueblu

Wyvern's suggestion of a paid upgrade is a very good one: I don't know personally if these are available at the transfer desk as opposed to normal check-in, but I can't think why not. Relatively good value as well.

tb

Athlete95

We can do this at check-in, and some people do ask for it. What we cannot do is guarantee you the best seats in Y though, as these will have most likely been taken by status pax or by people who have chosen the seats at OLCI or at the airport. We may be able to get you a row with the middle blocked out for you but this all depends on loads, and twice I have had couples (one pax in J, one pax in Y) who have wanted to downgrade to sit together but haven't been able to as it is full in Y.

Upgrading people to get a free row in Y is a problem too because its just like playing musical chairs- the whole plane gets shifted around!

LondonAndy

I had something similar where I was in J (as part of a longer trip) and my daughter was in Y (just for the segment) flying LGW to FCO. She was 2 at the time so could hardly fly in Y unacommpanied

At JFK they wanted silly money to upgrade her from Y to J, and said it was impossible to downgrade me to Y.

When I got to LGW it was possible either to upgrade my daughter to J for a reasonalbe price, or downgrade myself to Y - I ended up choosing the latter and becuase it had "VOL DGRADE" or something like that on my boarding pass I even got a couple of mini bottles of champers ^

jamienbaker

Many thanks for the encouragement. As I'm departing JFK on AA, do you suggest I head to T7 and try there with BA? Or better to be boots on the ground in LHR, preferably in the First lounge?

Sixth Freedom

Don't do it!

If I was your employer and had paid for a J ticket for you I would expect you to travel in J (although using your miles to upgrade to F is also fair enough).

I would be very unhappy if your wife was in J on the ticket that I had paid for and you were in Y. And if you were both in Y I would also be very unhappy. In fact, I would consider both cases to be gross misconduct.

Your employer has paid for J for a reason. And you should therefore travel in J!