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.

Yes, but what seems to have happened is the OP wanted to both change flight date and upgrade into CW. Somehow that was possible by first changing travel date to a day where only a change fee (no T-> E/W fare upcharge) applied and where CW reward space was available, and then changing the flight date again, keeping the upgraded cabin class without need any more for T-fare bucket availability.

Is that a known loophole/workaround (maybe something that shouldn't be discussed publicly here on FT), or just brilliant play by a very -clued in agent?

We were all confused as this wasn't explained in the original post.

You get it Cymro.

The reason P class is missing from my final post, is because it had nothing to do with what I needed in the end, it was false information provided by someone on the BA line that couldn't seemingly comprehend what needed to be done, (or perhaps I'm no good at communicating?).

I suspect the former, as I was already in WTP, so why on earth would I ask them to upgrade to a P seat, remaining in the same class.

Deleted

From how I read it this was only allowed to be actioned this way because the flight the OP wanted to change to there was no WTP availability at all and he didnt actually want to sit in WTP but simply use it to upgrade to club. However it is a little strange as it could have been argued that he could for example be charged a W class fare as this is all revman would probably release. I would see this maybe as a one off or what was done this time rather than what would happen each time in this scenario.

The key flight change was from one that was U1 T1 (or whatever non-zero numbers) to one that was U1 T0. Because the OP got a U class seat on the first flight, he changed U class for U class, regardless of availability in the underlying WT+ cash booking classes. I've had something similar done for me as well in the past, hence I would have said that this was possible if that had been the original question asked.

Are you saying that if you already hold a U class seat as a UuA from an underlying T class fare, and you want to change to a flight that's U1 T0, that should not be allowed without an additional cash upgrade of the underlying ticket?

This is correct, however this thread was primarily started due to the misinformation of me supposedly having to move to a P class ticket in order to upgrade to a U. That was solved long ago, this thread just took a turn and now the aim is being discussed rather than the initial question!

Maybe we need a close thread ;)

Yes i understand it. Well im saying that if you already hold a U class with a Uua and change, the underlying fare should be recalculated. So if there is no availibilty at all i was saying its arguable that you are charged to go to W rather than not be charged any fare difference.