eugegall

Evening all,

My wife and I are flying to Venice on one booking reference, which has offered me a £48 upgrade to CE.

Then my brother, his wife and two kids are also on the same flight on their own booking reference although I paid. They also have been offered the same upgrade.

I called BA earlier today to upgrade all of us but when she upgraded ours, their offer disappeared. She assures me its because someone else took the offer before she got to the second booking but I'm not so sure.

Can you guys think of anyway we can upgrade all of us? I don't know how to read the below but does this help?

Can I upgrade my wife and I using 12500 Avios and £20. If I do this will it keep the 4 upgrades for them? Or if I upgrade using Avios, will it remove their offer too? Different buckets?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

P.S I don't know how to read these things.

golfmad

The figures above suggest that it's a relatively lightly loaded flight at the moment. However, you don't mention your travel date. If it's imminent then this is probably reasonably accurate. If not, it may change in the run up to the flight.

It's perfectly reasonable that POUGs are limited and that by taking yours, the offer no longer exists for the others. It may or may not be reintroduced at some point in the future prior to the flight.

If you want to upgrade using Avios you will need to see whether Avios availability is present in CE on that flight for the number of seats you require. You can check this a number of ways including just trying a dummy booking.

The other option would be an AUP at the airport which may or may not be available.

Many may argue that CE isn't worth the upgrade costs for a relatively short flight.

Confus

The Avios upgrade buckets don’t show in that view.

cameramaker

Your money may be better spent on some plastic champagne flutes from the supermarket and a couple of bottles of champagne from Fortnum & Mason in T5!

Only a few POUGs get offered per flight and once they’re sold, they’re sold. If you take the POUG yourself, you might be able to then use your avios to upgrade the other party. Check how many reward seats are left by searching a one way avios ticket in club for that flight.

eugegall

Thanks for your reply.

There is availability for Avios upgrade.

I just hope it doesn't remove their option for upgrade too.

Can I cancel the Avios upgrade if it doesn't work do you know?

eugegall

Thanks for the heads up.

Personally I agree with you on this one however its a treat for them so want to give them the best experience I can and for £50 each, I'm more then comfortable with that.

corporate-wage-slave

Does this mean that you did not in fact go ahead with the POUG your booking? It's not clear what you have done / not done.

POUGs are often doled out in limited numbers, it's more widely advertised, with MMB altering across the board at midnight London time, but if someone takes the POUG invisble bucket then you'll see the advert but not succeed in getting space.

UuA does come out of a different bucket, which you can work out from BA.com, it will indicate if there are only 2 or 6 or whatever redemption spaces going. That isn't subject to the same process, so normally if you take 2 when there are 6 available then it should hold good for the other 4.

And it will all recalculate again at the midnight hour, maybe sooner.

eugegall

Sorry for being vague.

She upgraded and then refunded us when she realised we all couldn't be upgraded.

The flight is on the 2nd October at 8:50am.

I hope I can upgrade two of us with Avios and then the other 4 with the £48 upgrade option.

Dave Noble

It seems a complete waste of money to me to upgrade to CE , but if you want to upgrade them, why not pay to upgrade them 1st and then see if there is availability to upgrade your flight afterwards

I suspect that you may well pay GBP300 to upgrade a 90 min flight for them to end up thinking why would people pay extra for it.

corporate-wage-slave

My suspicion is that if you do the POUG first, it won't affect the UuA bucket, so you should do it in that order. Nothing is guaranteed however. If you have enough to UuA all 6, then if you explain this to the BAEC agent s/he will "grab" the seats first, then deal with the payment, which isn't possible with POUG. It is also worth checking whether the fare difference from ET to CE is lower, which is a new phenomena, thanks to the remission of change fees, normally this would never work out. Then finally check whether if you rebook now (albeit with part of the Sale ending yesterday) works out cheapest, in which case you could claim FTVs and then rebook via that route.

krispy84

Given the very reasonable CE fares available atm, I would phone up and ask about changing the fare class on the booking to club. From what was posted above, it looks like I9 on your flight (at least 9 tickets available in the cheapest CE fare class).

eugegall

Thanks for the advice. For me, the price is showing as £198 as a new ticket purchase!

golfmad

Or slum it in ET for 90 mins and save yourself cash, Avios and a lot of telephone hassle.

corporate-wage-slave

I suspect there is a Rule of Six lounge visit at stake here.

Often1

It is also entirely possible that when you cancelled your upgrade that they were not returned to the bucket and might not be if someone else books into CE or randomly upgrades. Those buckets can change in an instant. My best advice would be to upgrade those one can and then speak with someone onboard and let people shuffle within the family group. If this were a 16-hour flight in F vs. steerage, I might give different advice.