Double POUG??
 

The other half is currently booked in WT for our return flight from BGI. Ba.com is now offering a very attractive POUG to WT+, much better than the price in Upgrade Your Booking recently. Ideally we want to get him into CW with me. Until today Upgrade Your Booking was offering a (hefty) price for the double upgrade WT-CW but that is now gone.

so my question is: if we take the POUG to WT+ is that one and done, or is there still a Chs be ba.com comes back with a second upgrade offer to CW before we fly?

thanks!

POUGs are invariably for a one cabin upgrade. You can "stack" an AUP on top, for one or more cabins, subject to availability. But you can't UuA a POUG or do a fare difference upgrade (which were the other upgrade fares you were looking at here).

I don't believe that you can be do a POUG after you have already done a proactive online upgrade (POUG).

If you do go for the POUG, you could do an airport upgrade if one is available.

Your other option is to do a fare rules upgrade to WTP and then (1) upgrade using avios to CW, if there is avios availability and you have the avios, (2) hope you offered a POUG to CW , or (3) hope you are offered an airport upgrade to CW.

ok thanks. Is the fare difference upgrade to CW likely to reappear or have we missed the boat on that?

The fare difference will always be available so long as it was bought from BA direct. It's just that if a POUG shows up it kind of hides it in MMB (and it would be fairly confusing as you have seen, fare difference upgrades can also change some of the ticket's other conditions relating to refunds and so on). If you call then they can quote over the phone. If the POUG goes then the fare difference upgrade will probably surface again. AUPs appear to be very available at the moment, and they are a similar cost to POUGs and can be for one, two or even three cabin upgrades.

It should be pointed out that POUGs and AUPs are more expensive than the cheapest direct purchase, they aren't quite the bargain they are made out to be, but that may be a hypothetical point.

As an anecdote, I was able to do two POUGs to go from WT to CW on a MIA-LHR flight last year. Immediately after completing the POUG from WT to WT+, it offered me another POUG to CW for the same price. Maybe this was an aberration of BA's famous IT, I don't know. But I was able to complete both consecutive POUGs, and we did indeed fly CW on that flight - it was my first-ever CW flight, in fact!

I have a different experience, on an LHR-YVR trip a few months ago. The system would let me complete an upgrade my other half's WT+ to CW, and I was then offered CW to F, so I went ahead, and paid for that too, but just after taking the second payment, computer said no. I called up BA, and was informed that double poug wasn't allowed, and that I'd receive a card refund.

Although the theory is that you can’t POUG a flight that you have already POUG, BA and IT don’t always mix well. I did once POUG a Y to W on LHR/MIA. As soon as I did so another POUG for W to J appeared (same price). It may well have been a glitch, which I took full advantage of.

I’ve just been offered a second POUG on both legs of a LHR-GIG for next week. Couldn’t process online, but the BAEC line sorted easily.
WT-WTP £229 WTP-CW £586

Sounds to me like MIA is the destination of choice for immediate same-price double POUGs, then!

Just went back to check my receipts, and indeed, on top of a £312.01 + 14,500 Avios per person booking in WT for LHR-MIA-LHR, I have the receipt for £204 pp for upgrading MIA-LHR to WT+, and less than an hour later, another £204 pp for upgrading it to CW.

Also later POUG'd the LHR-MIA leg to WT+ for a slightly saltier £239 pp, and no secondary POUG was offered IIRC.

Good times.

So if I understand you correctly that is £720.01plus 14,500 Avios for a CW leg to MIA? Sounds pretty good.