darthlemsip

I don't think so - I've been SCH and then GCH for about the same, and have only ever had one space available upgrade (due to a horrendous flight home from DFW) given to me in that time. Yet my folks, both Blue, got op-upped from WT+ to CW when flying home from SFO earlier this year, having been trying every day to UUA beforehand and finding no availability.

Jammy sods

ThatT1Feeling

Had DUT/1 before the exec club numbers on all 4 BP stubs of the TT1F family today - but none of us was upgraded .. Maybe it just showed we were on the list if any UGs required? Got quite excited until the upgrades didn't materialise!!

Seat64A

If this is true I can see an argument in favour of it.

From a utilitarian perspective we should aim to maximise utility; that is to say, maximise happiness in a population.

In general, there is, I'm sure, a greater gain in happiness from, say, someone who's never travelled in First being upgraded to First compared with someone who usually travels First but is upgraded to First on the unusual occasion of being booked in Club.

(It's much the same as saying that, generally speaking, an extra �1 of income brings a much smaller increase in happiness to someone who has already �1m in annual income than it brings to someone who has only �5000 income.)

richie_ja

I flew to IAD last month in WT+ . I was told at checkin that there were up to 8 to be upgraded, and the checkin lady typed "SFU" into the computer (as I asked about the potential!). I was told that it was very likely that I would be upgraded "as a GCH". And I wasn't....and I kind of knew I wasn't going to be!

Generally speaking, colleagues of mine that are Silver and fly less definitely get a better % hit rate from WT+ to CW, without a doubt. But they probably enjoy it more than I, so I'm not complaining too much.

paulwuk

I suspect date of booking is the key. As I usually book fully flex tickets, and until becoming GGL had a civ in the high 80s, with no special deal fares to speak of, since this new program came in my op-up rate has plummeted. Now batting something like 0 in 25 flights. The key is I usually book in the t-7 day window.

Once again I'm considering not going out of my way to renew status.

Ziz

I have a very high op-up percentage for some reason. My first op-up came as a Blue from WT to WT+. I only ever book WT or WT+ (I'm a poor student) but I've never paid for and travelled in WT+. That is, my op-up percentage after booking WT+ is 100%. I'm bronze and I wonder if it's because the WT+ cabin is so small that I'm likely the highest status passenger there. For example, I'm flying YYZ-LHR in 1.5 weeks and I noticed that the best seats are all still available in WT+ implying there are no Golds or Silvers booked in the cabin who could have selected their seats already...

flyingscotsman

I was completely shocked, at online check in 22hrs before departure, to be upgraded CW to F at that point, recently on DXB-LHR, and then be allowed to access the seat map and bag myself 3A.

As a fairly lowly SCH, I have no idea what prompted this. Yes, it was just at the start of UAE school holidays, so I'm not sure if travelling alone had something to do with it. Also the whole aircraft was jammed. But I am sure there would be enough golds in CW who could have been moved up - which left me thinking that the lovely lounge dragon at GLA had mentioned that she had marked me 'SFU' on the outbound sector when I had mentioned I really needed to sleep on the way out. Did leave me wondering if this had influenced my return OPUG.

paul4040

It would make commercial sense for BA to op-up those who travel with some frequency but don't usually fly in premium cabins. A "taste" of the upgraded service might be enough to make someone purchase a revenue fare for a premium cabin next time.

I usually travel in CE which no doubt BA's CRM picks up on. BA already know my regular travel pattern (which is very fixed), what I can likely afford, and what I am prepared to spend. It wouldn't make commercial sense for them to op-up me if they found me travelling in ET. They know I always buy CE fares if I can, I know what the product is, and that they will always get their money.

(PS: BA lurker, you already have my BAEC # so feel free to prove me wrong )

TheBaps

I've had barren periods but never to that extent, and those periods always seem to be followed by bursts of back to back op-ups so on average I think it still stands between 1 in 3 and 1 in 2. Mind you my booking class and pattern tends to be a bit random, flipping between ex-EU premuium cabins and direct WT+ and booking myself or booking through company, so maybe I'm managing to confuse the system that pigeon holes people

corporate-wage-slave

Maybe I should stop memorising all your previous posts, though they are very interesting, if a little on the whinge side of the house. However a few months ago you said that Little Red were the bees knees and that therefore Silver was the way to go. Fast forward a few months and the next thing is we see the little GGL flag go up and Joker Redemptions being used with gay abandon. So does this mean you won't try quite so hard to get CCR or have I missed something?

Ziz

It's a good strategy - if I had the money I would definitely travel in CW! Or F which they did double upgrade me to once, ruining any other cabin forever .

paulwuk

Ahh, my own stalker

I do whinge a lot, it helps me whinge less at work and home, where it matters. Flyertalk gets the brunt of my grumpiness.

BA were good to me last year, but since about Octoberish it's been rather uninspiring treatment for someone that (were it AA) would probably be getting a concierge key.

Being booted out of the exit row for a middle seat just before christmas didn't help endear BA to me.

Since trying VS little red, I've moved all my domestic flights there (about 50 a year). I've pretty much given up with BA on euro routes (mainly Belgium). I've been looking for an opportunity to use VS long haul, but since March I've been stuck in Nairobi, Cairo and now Singapore, with TLV and AMM threatening. I had one opportunity to fly VS rather than BA - IAD a few months ago, but being so close to 3k I thought I might as well go for it.

I did have a VS flight to NY booked early this month for the weekend, but managed to get out of it. Now that the year end has rolled over it's time to think about whether to go for the 3,000 again, with no way of knowing what my pattern is going to be like, or to give VS a go to Delhi next month.

Certainly does. To an extent. Once you've been op-upped a dozen or so times though, and haven't changed your buying pattern, why should BA bother?


Perhaps, but if there aren't many Silvers, there must be an infintesimal number of golds.

In the 6 hours before my last flight to Syd, 3 seats that were previously booked opened up on the seat map. Not that I'm complaining as I managed to move from a middle to an aisle, and it's possible that on a F0I1W0Y0 flight that there weren't any upgrades from WTP, but I doubt there were many GGLs in there.

Paralytic

My op-up rate has definitely reduced since becoming Gold 2 years ago, particularly on my most common route, EDI-LHR-SFO in WT+.

Around 90%+ of my flights are on that route and in WT+, and when I was Silver, I was op-up'd to CW on around 30% of flights. Since I became Gold, I'm at 0%. I've flown around 20 segments on that route since I became Gold.

Dicksbits

�.with a special meal preference on my profile, I'll never be entitled to receive an OP-UP. I still find it amazing that in that situation they'd rather upgrade a Blue member, or worse still, a non BAEC member, just because of the meal issue. I'm Silver and heading to Gold this year.

bioblot

It's been mentioned that BA probably target non-staus pax for OpUps to encourage them to consider booking a higher class in future.

I would think the opposite is equally likely to be true. Status pax get less OpUps because it might discourage them from booking higher cabins if they know they have a reasonable chance of an upgrade anyway.