Finding seats in P (or any other class)
 

Hi everyone,

Over the past 6 months I've started flying for work, and have heavily geeked out on flyertalk to try and become a 'master of points(..)'!

I've amassed quite a few avios now, and given I'm useless with scheduling planned personal trips, I instead fancied making my work trips a little more enjoyable by changing a few JFK > LHR red-eyes to Biz from Prem. However, my current ticket is seat type T, and I need to cash-upgrade it to P in order to upgrade with Avios.

Everything I can see when looking manually on the BA site and calling up is W (Fully Flex), resulting in an excess of £1500 - obviously not worth it. However, I've been told that if I can change the seat to a P, on a plane with a Biz redemption, I can switch, pay for the P upgrade, then do a biz redemption, then switch it back to the date I desire, with it keeping the biz redemption (assuming the flight has a biz redemption seat available).

So. My challenge now is finding a P seat on a flight with Biz Redemption. I have ExpertFlyer, but although it's giving me supposed flights with P seats open, when I call to check with BA they aren't seeing those seats so I'm not sure EF is accurate.

Has anyone done something similar, or can suggest a route to identify P seats?

Thanks in advance!

P class is mostly used by BA for award seats in World Traveller Plus (premium economy). The only way of which I have heard for cash upgrading into P class is if you take a special offer upgrade (Proactive Online Upgrade or POUG) to upgrade from economy to WT+. That puts you into P class. And AIUI once you have done that, you cannot upgrade using Avios from P class into Club World (business class).

There are no cash fares filed for P class, so you cannot change from T class to P class using cash. P class is generally regarded as "below" T class in the hierarchy anyway because it is an award class.

In other words, I suspect that you may have been misinformed.

T, like all publicly available WTP tickets, is upgradeable; P is an AA fare class for cash tickets and a BA fare class for award tickets in the premium economy cabin. Are you on a BA or an AA booking?

BA. And yes that what I thought, as far as I was aware only the lower Econ tickets required a paid upgrade to use avios redemption upgrades. However I spoke to 2 people on BA G line today, both telling me I needed a P class to upgrade. Were both incorrect? :confused:

Yes I read this, and I don't understand how it could be a requirement to be in P class to use an avios redemption if you can only end up in it AFTER using one from Econ, meaning you can't go any higher anyway. Very confused really.

That sounds like a misunderstanding, them thinking you wanted to upgrade into WTP, and there needing to be P availability.

Do you have a BA-issued (125-) ticket for a BA code on a BA aircraft?

Something must have gone wrong in communication somewhere, because you can upgrade pretty much all T class cash tickets to CW, so long as there is award availability in CW (U class).

Yes I think so.

If you have a BA ticket booked into World Traveller Plus and you want to upgrade to Club World with Avios you need redemption availability in Club World (this is U class).

I've even checked to see if BA has somehow started selling P class as a revenue bucket, and they're not.

P class the redemption class of wtp any wtp class can be upgraded with avios to upgrade with avios to club you need U availability the class that is sold of avios redemptions

Update for everyone who was following. This was indeed possible, the gentleman I spoke to who's name began with R was very good, and instead of dismissing me this time noted the series of steps I needed him to perform, rather than repeating "not possible".

So, background again for those curious.

1. Current flight on Friday in a T seat (WTP) - let's call it flight 1
2. Want to change to Saturday flight U seat (CW) - let's call this flight 3
3. No T seats available on flight 3, meaning I have do find ANOTHER flight with T (WTP) seats, and U (CW) seats available - let's call this flight 2

So, I had to change to flight 2, to avoid moving into a W (fully flex) seat on flight 3 that I actually wanted which would have cost ALOT
Then, I had to upgrade to a CW U seat on that same flight
Then, I could change it back to the Saturday flight that I wanted

Total cost, £500 & 24k avios
Total cost if I would have moved direct to W on flight 3, then upgraded, £1500 for W seat + then £200 or so tax & 24k avios

And now, I am in the new CWS :D

What's missing from your update is any mention of a P class seat.

If you'd asked about this sequence of events, we could have told you yesterday that it was possible.

Yes, but the OP didn't invent the P class seat - he was given very strange information from the Gold line. Either way, it's confirmed that our understanding of how these things work continues to be valid!

I stand by my suspicion that "Something must have gone wrong in communication somewhere".

For clarification on a commercial ticket you can only upgrade one cabin with Avios. In WTP the commercial booking class would be W E or T and to upgrade with Avios to Club you would need U.

Further to this P class is either Avios booking class for full redemption, Avios upgrade or POU.

However if you did a POU you cant then do an Avios upgrade (ie cant go POU to P then to U with Avios) because Avios upgrades cant be used in connection with other discounts.