beyounged

I found a fare that I would like to use, and encountered some strange things that got me, a noobie in BA, quite confused. Anyone can help me out?
First question is that is it possible to upgrade a flight use avios, and then change your FFP to another program so that I can earn on, for example, AS?
Also while I tried searching, I did a mock-booking with Book and Upgrade with Avios option, and it came out drastically different than the fares I saw. The one I saw is BCN-LHR-PVG for 1260EUR and the one BA kept pushing me is over 7k. I read that all J fares are eligible for upgrade so why not on my cheaper I class fare?


and this is the result I got when I try to get the same flight but upgrade the outbound into F


Also, I searched BA and there is wide spread F class availability from LHR to PVG on the 5th of Dec, but there showed no availability for upgrade for 5th. I thought as long as I can see a seat open on BA it is upgrade-able? Is there married segment logic going on here?

corporate-wage-slave

When it comes to UuA, you best do a manual calculation of approximately what it should be (by adding in the difference in taxes, fees, charges and Avios), but not being too surprised if the fare is wrong online, you best call up and get a manual calculation done instead. The agent will usually hold your booking while that happens. This is a longstanding issue and often reported by others in this forum.

For switching FFP, yes, that can be done, but personally I'd get everything in place then use the usual trick of switching FFP via Finnair after everything is ticketed. Note that UuA may make it less likely for the base fare to credit correctly with AS, so it's an added complication which is probably resolvable but it is worth bearing in mind.

BrianDromey

To upgrade with Avios there needs to be award seats available in F. It’s not a case of any available seats can be booked, unfortunately.

beyounged

yes, the third picture is an award search on F, and there are enough award seats open to fill everyone with my family name. Yet if you search on BA it will tell you no upgrades available on any flight on 5th to F.

beyounged

So is it better to call and book this? Or is it better to ticket it as a J itinerary and then call for a UuA? Also what is the Finnair method? Login witn PNR on AY and then it allows you to switch FFP on it? Worst case scenario I will just do the swap at check-in. Gonna keep everything with me and AS customer care is generally very good in my opinion so I would be happy to deal with them, thus no problem with the hassles, especially compared to the difference in miles I could get.

Globaliser

You can do either. Personally, I usually call to book in this situation, seeing as I have to call anyway.

TTmex

If you book and call and they don't have the availability then you are within your rights to cancel the tickets free of charge (Assuming you do this within 24 hours of booking). You can then try again with another booking on different dates to find availability.

orbitmic

I really wouldn’t recommend the switch. The uua’ed itinerary will appear to AS as booked in an award ticket and I wouldn’t count on things being resolved and if they are, this could be after a lot of perseverance and effort. Credit to ba and get your base fare credited correctly in 95%+ cases

beyounged

Ah I see, I guess I will just not UuA then.
AS awards way too many miles to not do it on AS FFP, and I am just shy of requalification of that sweet, sweet free 50k miles, guess I will suffer in BA J. Just think of 8-abreast seating as sleeping on the carpet between lavs in Y, and it will be allll fine.

HIDDY

Nobody is forcing you to buy the ticket.

Blueboys999

Is this something peculiar to switches to AS or does it also apply to any partner airline?

Mwenenzi

Yes.
However swapping ff numbers does not always stick/work.
Any combination of problems with flights crediting to one/other ffp and boarding pass printed with one/other freq flyer number. And doing an upgrade is another complication. It may/may not credit based on the base fare (as paid) and/or upgrades class (non earning award fare bucket). At a lounge, the attendant swiping a ff card can do strange things.
Or any other problem with earning ff miles/status you can think of.

I would never try to swap ffp's on an upgraded flight.

beyounged

That sounds like a real hurdle, but I am kinda curious to see how it will work out. I have a lot of faith in AS as I dealt with their customer support on the sudden HU earning chart swap(I was also the only one dealing with it at that time), and they were very friendly and went out of their way to credit the original earnings for me. I guess I will stick to J and not upgrade in order to preserve my AS FFP on it. But if I ever change it, I will report back on how it workedbackfired when it all resolves.

orbitmic

I think that there could be issues with automatic crediting with any partner airline as it will always show as an award bucket to them. However, I would expect that it would be easier to resolve any potential issue with OW partners as they have stronger structure in place to resolve crediting issues. As AS is completely separate, I just don't know what the process would be and would personally expect that it would have higher chances to fail. I may of course be entirely wrong, this is just a worry/suspicion and not an experience.

beyounged

just to report back: it actually worked without any complication at all.
I bought the J tix and got it ticketed within minutes, and then rang up the BA line for an UuA. The agent immediately understood what I wanted to do, assured me it would work, and simply took my avios off the account while keeping AS FFP. My F flight credited with the connecting J leg automatically base on the original booking class in 14 days. So for posterity: this is very doable and likely very safe.