710 77345

This is by no means certain - I would search online for availability (by trying to book a seat using only miles), and if so, give BA a call asap - regardless of the weather.

Globaliser

LHR-JNB on the night of the freezing fog just before Christmas: J -> F for the two of us, at the gate.

What was particularly nice was that we'd MFUd from W to J when the strike was cancelled and suddenly there was award availability all over the place, and the mileage cost of the MFU was exactly the amount of the "sorry" deposited into my account.

Oh, and sitting in F did rather blunt the pain of the 4-hour wait for deicing.

YClass

Just wondering - what are peoples upgrade percentages? (I had a bit of time this afternoon...) Interesting to see if people are higher or lower etc.

For me: 210 sectors (since I've been counting) with only 2 upgrades (BA Y->J as Gold and GB Airways ET->CE as Silver), so upgrade one in every hundred flights.

About 50% have been on BA metal.
About 75% have been OW.
About 70% have had some form of elite status while flying
About 75% have had a possibility of an upgrade (ie higher cabin exists)

So basically my upgrade rate on flights where an upgrade is possible and I've had some form of elite status is in the order of 2%. With the amount of flights I take, I should expect 1 or 2 upgrades a year. Y -> J TATL was pretty spectacular (two of us as well) but would like to see more J -> F .

So is that high? low? Should one expect more/less or expect anything at all? Anyone know what it is in the airline industry as a whole?

FlyerTalker6245

For me, in my last 100 flights (which admittedly takes us back a few years), I have had 1 upgrade so that is 1%.

Those remembering my TR will remember it was a J -> F on LHR to BOS.

I am a lowly blue on this board.

**

On AZ, I have flown once and I was upgraded to business, so I have a 100% upgrade rate with Alitalia!!!!!!!!!

Dirty_Idea

I'd guess that of about 120-150 BA sectors I have taken (and that's a real guess, it could be more), 0 upgrades. so that's 0%

itsmeitisss

similar story for me and I have done many ore sectors. Mind you I'm usually in business, so CW - F upgrades are rarer

WeleaseBwian

Haven't got the exact numbers (left laptop with flight log on it at work) but roughly in the last 7 or so years when I've been either gold or silver....

Short Haul

Y > CE 2 out of 20 (10%)

Long Haul

Y > W 1 out of 1 (100% !!!!)
W > J 12 out of 50 (24%)
J > F 1 out of 20 (5%)

I've only included paid for flights (not miles or MFUs) where an op-up is a possibility.

r22r44bell47

Rarer perhaps, but not impossible. Mrs Rotorhead and I enjoyed a nice J > F upgrade LHR-SIN on a miles booking a couple of years back. Mind you that was a bit weird - we had the SS treatment at checkin and were told that they were sorry that they couldn't upgrade us (we managed to take that with looks of mild dissapointment rather than letting our jaws hit the ground) then in the lounge I was called to the desk and presented with reprinted boarding cards for F Perhaps that doesn't count as an op-up?!

Jimbob247

Almost all of my last 100 paid flights are in CE of Dom, so none, ever.

Savage25

my BA op-up percentage for long haul flights is 17%.

IanMKT6

Pretty similar to me. I'm a solid (fairly high Gold - currently 89 - thanks to looking over the lounge dragon's shoulder at GF the other day) do around 120-150 sectors per year mainly in J longhaul, or a mix of J and Y in Europe, and in the last few years I have had precisely 0 upgrades.

Four years ago I got lucky however (when I was a lowly Silver status), with upgrades from WT to WT+ on both sectors of a return to Hong Kong (a long weekend trip for a stag weekend, so would have slept anywhere on the return )

Wife with Blue status and my wonderful mother-in-law have both been upgraded twice in the last couple of years, both J to F...

Swanhunter

Last 2 years longhaul, 50% J to F. Shrthaul around 5%.

Sixth Freedom

Zero percent for me.

David-A

You should expect (both in theory and in practice) none at all.

If you happen to get one then you are lucky, but you certainly should not be expecting one no matter how many thousands of flights you may take....

Dirty_Idea

Well, actually, yes you should. OK, time for some really dire stats, full of weak assertions and piss-poor assumptions. If one were to take a straw poll of upgrades per person per sector, I'd hazard that it would come out above the 0.05% or less that "thousands" would suggest. If we assume that BA have no particular favouritism in granting upgrades, a typical punter booking 2,000 flights over the next period should expect (ie. it's more likely to happen than not) an upgrade - in the same way that someone flipping a coin 20 times should expect a head at some point. Not guarantee, but to expect on the balance of probablilty.

Which brings us to the rub. Either we are seeing an atypical population (ie. a handful of really lucky travellers alongside a handful of unlucky ones), or BA have some sort of bias in selecting upgrades, or someone is fibbing. With the number of sectors being flown reported as quite high, the sample set from sectors point of view is pretty good.

So, what is it, an atypical population or are some people more likely to get upgrades?