Ridiculous airport upgrade pricing
 

I'm flying BA192 tonight, apparently in my purchased WT+ seat (21J with a blocked seat next to me). Call me crazy, but I simply can't imagine anyone paying $1100 for a WT+ to Club upgrade (more than the fare difference when I booked).

This seems like a serious lack of revenue maximization, particularly on a flight that's showing J9.

What am I missing?

Would it be that you were denied the AUP offer and just quoted the fare difference? (IIRC BA will deny AUP offers to people who have utilised them too often on the past?)

Doubtful, as I've never accepted any of their similarly outrageous offers in the past.

What you would seem to be missing is that it doesn;t matter what the fare was at time of original purchase, what matters is the fare when wanting to make a change. Why not just have booked business up front? If it was just a gamble at getting a discount offer to upgrade, then this time you missed out

The airline isn't going to always be offering discounted upgrades

That price seems about right. I've often be offered a 'special price upgrade' (WT+-CW) which given my farcical expression even the agent has then noted, was not 'special'. However, a bargain compared with a $5500 upgrade being offered for one of my WT+-CW flights (although it is only $5400 if I upgrade both ways!). As others have noted before, BA don't want passengers knowing that they can take advantage of last minute 'cheap' upgrades since they probably wouldn't buy more expense fares in the first place.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if once or twice a year they just gave upgrades becuase a seat in the next cabin was available, obviously not every time but just the odd one as a thankyou.

I have numerous trips where the I've tried for an Avios upgrade Several times in the run up to recent trips to be told k ow availability only for the cabin I was trying to get in to be half empty once onboard.

Once or twice a year (e.g. to every status holder actually) would end up being a lot. Potential for serious revenue erosion by people expecting it (especially when they haven't had an upgrade for a while).

They already do to some extent by giving GUFs to those to accumulate enough TPs - with recent changes they don't require reward availability.

Absolutely no hope. BA revenue management would burn AC at the stake before they would allow that.

And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

The usual East Coast to LHR AUP rate is around USD800 to USD1200, perhaps a bit less on a BOS service where they are really keen to move people, a bit more on a less than full DFW service. AUPs are calibrated so that they are always higher than the lowest differential possible between WTP and CW, however at the time of purchase it is possible that the AUP rate will be the most effective way into CW, for example if there isn't a Saturday night away. The entire logic here being that BA preserve overall revenue management over tactical short term monetary gain. So what happened here is that BA didn't need to create WTP space, and if they were offering CW it would be on the basis of about the same cost as the initial purchase cost. Want CW? Pay CW. Crazy it is not. Almost certainly the most cost effective route into CW would be Upgrade using Avios, where a different set of logic comes into play. Still there would have been USD 500 cash to pay on top of the Avios.

More information on AUP rates in the BA Forum Dashboard.

A destination.
OK, an origin in this case. It's Dallas DFW