Upgraded, NOT!
 

A little while ago I asked this forum what my chances of an Op-Up would be on BA because I have sapphire through American. I was told it would be tough and it was, I didn't get it. But my traveling companion who has no status on any Oneworld carrier presented his boarding pass and the beep beep happend. He got upgraded to Club world.

...????

What did I do wrong? They changed the equipment and the world traveler plus went from 5 or 6 rows to only three. I still would have thought having some status would have got me the upgrade before someone without any status. FYI, the tickets where the same in price and fare but on different record locators. Not sure if that helps.

Thanks.

I don't know the reasons, logic or anything at all for choosing a non-tier member above an OWS for op-up. It has always baffled me that my mother has a far, far better op-up rate than I do, and she doesn't even belong to any frequent flyer programme at all.

But commiserations to you. I can imagine you may have felt a little bit slighted (and I don't blame you if you did - I may well feel a bit put out in that situation)?

Was your companion a BAEC Blue? It would be interesting to see if a BAEC Blue gets prioritised over non-BA OWS.

Or, maybe he/she is a closet BAEC Silver. :eek:

Your case is particularly curious because you say that the tickets were the same price, so it could not have been due to higher fares being given a priority.

Looks strange on the face of it indeed. Could it be that your travel companion had a problem with a BA flight which could have led to a note on his/her file? Did you check in in the same way? Some airlines now explicitly say that people who OLCI are advantaged in terms of upgrade sequence. Or any corporate contract that may apply in his/her case and not in yours?

We checked in at the same time, moved us to two seats next to each other at checkin because of equipment change. He has no status on BA (Crediting to American, and he doesn't have status there either.) In all ways it just made no sense.

If it was a late notice equipment change it may just have been that there wasn't the time to go through the usual steps and BA put the priority on getting the flight out in time, upgrading a random person.

Or maybe your friend showed a very flashing smile to the right member of staff at the right time.

Impossible to say - which is why the OpUp process is not an exact science at all. Sorry about that - I'm sure you would have liked to get it.
I would be annoyed just like you.

Recently on a flight to ORD I was travelling with a colleague (a gold card holder) who came from a different point of origin and on a different PNR. I called the GGL line and asked to connect the bookings so that I would not get an op/up to F on my own as we wanted to be seated together. When we arrived at the gate my colleague had been upgraded to F but I had not. We queried this and the staff member at the gate called operations. They said that had made a mistake as I was supposed to be upgraded and not him but because of the linking they had made a mistake but that they cannot upgrade me now even though there were spare seats in F and none in J. We said we wanted to be seated together so they upgraded someone else and moved the perso nexnt to me to the seat of the person they had upgraded.

Personally I think that was bad performance on BA's part. Mistakes happen but at the point they should have fixed it by upgrading me as well rather than spending 7 minutes shifting all those people including downgrading my colleague.

I mentioned what happened to the CSM who agreed it should have been handled better and he would report it through his iPad. I never received a response from BA even though it happened more than a month ago. TBH I am not going to follow up or pursue it as (a) we wanted to be seated together which we were in the end; (b) operational upgrades are nice but should not be expected; and (c) I get plenty of upgrades anyway.

OpUps are intended to suit the airline's needs, not passenger expectations.

OP got the class of service he paid for. Why does anyone think he has grounds for complaint?

A few years ago the exact same thing happened to me, in my case it was ny colleague's first ever flight on BA. Maybe that is one reason why they did upgrade him in the hope he would travel more with them, whereas with me and my years at either Gold or Silver they knew I was lilely to keep using them.

Hopefully like me you'll get over it with the help of counselling :D

+1 these things can happen at the last minute and are done to suit loads in particular cabins. It also goes to prove that having status is not a guarantee of an op-up.

On a trip to China a couple of years back my daughter and I were travelling CW and others in the group were travelling WT. Four of the group got an op-up from WT to CW on the return sector from PEK-LHR. They had no status and possibly never flown BA before.

Understatement of the year...

Might even be a clever thing to do upgrades to non-status pax every once in a while. Show them what premium cabins are like in the hope of them paying for it in the future.

It is unlikely to get much more out of a customer who has already proven his fierce loyalty by having a shiny card.

Should this be moved to the upgrade experiences thread?

I do wonder if there is a policy of upgrading new blues. Several anecdotes on here over the last couple of years, to which I can add the experience of Mrs_Al... She was travelling to JFK with three others in WT. Two bookings, two people each (one originating GLA, one MAN). The two travelling from MAN, on their first ever BA flights, and signed up to EC at Mrs_Al's insistence, were op-upped to WTP. The other two weren't.

What made it even odder is that whilst the four of them were sat together in a row, the two upgraded were not sat next to each other (because the two groups were able to OLCI at different times, they picked seats in such a way as to discourage others from taking the other seats in the row).

Sadly, they felt unable to take advantage of the op-up, as one of the upgradees is a very fearty flyer, and needed to be sat between two of her friends. Two random individuals were quite pleased, however!

I think theres some truth in that.

My only upgrade experience was when I rejoined BAEC after a bit of a hiatus and I got upgraded as a Blue, albeit off a very expensive fully flexible WTP ticket.

8 or so years as a BA Silver, the only beeps I've got at the gate are to move me from my chosen seat to another seat in the same cabin due to an inoperative seat or IFE.

So BA know that I/my employer consistently buys a couple of J tickets a year, a handful of CE tickets and I buy some sale tickets and do maybe 1 MFU and a redemption a year.

I don't fly BA exclusively, but my annual spend with BA runs in a pretty straight line. So I would imagine that they can probably work out that upgrading me won't increase their sales. My travel pattern also shows that I am probably a fairly 'captive' market. Thus I probably have a lower upgrade profile than someone who may be a first timer who BA think might enjoy the CW experience enough to buy into that cabin in the future.

Judging by comments on here there may be some truth in that. Once bitten by the bug.... It's rather like selling drugs. Sell cheap or give away samples to get the punters hooked.

Am I bothered - no not really. I expect to get what I paid for and never go to the airport with any hope or expectation of an upgrade. Likewise I never go to a restaurant expecting a bottle of wine on the house or my tailor to throw in an extra pair of trousers for free.