Upgrading with 6 M.O. lap infant (and two adults) from WT Plus to Club.
 

Hi all.

I have a friend and his wife traveling on the 744 NYC-LHR WT plus, going onward on BA to eastern europe.

First, if the upgrade occurs AFTER tix purchase and payment will the LAP infant be recharged or repriced to the flown cabin class?

I would have though that the 10% would be based on the booked and purchased class. After all , when we are lucky to get an upgrade to clear we accrue millage and tier points at BOOKED class and not the FLOWN Class. Other that revenue augmentation, I see no reason for this policy of American Airlines.

I wanted to know BA's policy.

I did a search of the wonderful stickys' on this civil, friendly forum.
I note" U "class is needed for "Club redemptions".

Are upgrades from WT Plus and outright free Club seats coming out of the same "U" inventory bucket.

I did a through search but any first hand advice would be most appreciated.
I will pass it along crediting you guys to the anxious young parents traveling for the very first time with their first. the infant boy will be 6 to 7 months old at time of travel.

Thanks so much!

Rich

Upgrade and straight reward seats both come out of the same fare bucket - i.e. for club "U"

The infant can upgrade for 10% of the miles - not sure how it would work if you wanted to pay for it, but I;'m sure BA would get some cash out of it!

The normal etiquette is that the infant travels with the nanny in the rear portion of the plane. BA policy permits parental visits during the flight, provided the seat belt sign is not illuminated. During periods of turbulence, I have always found the very helpful club/First cabin crew will deliver to the baby such essential supplies as the parents may have, such as valium.

:D Glad my wife isn't reading this, she'll start to get ideas!

Thanks Tony!

But its a lap infant.

no seat was purchased.

Are you saying that its 10% of the miles instead of 10% of the full J class fare? Then this would certainly be an improvement over paying 10% cash of the FLOWN, Upgraded fare.

A lap infant on BA pays 10% of the adult fare regardless of class of travel. This is different to the policy for AA domestic flights where they're completely free.

I've never done this in two stages as you describe, but always bought & upgraded the tickets at the same time. The options we had were to pay 10% of the club class fare, or 10% of the WT+ fare, plus the 10% in miles, or 10% of the club class miles. It worked out about the same if you value the miles around 1.7p each IIRC.

The AA policy referred to (and UA is the same) is that on international flights a lap infant pays 10% of the class flown. So if you buy economy and upgrade to business for yourself you must also pay the difference between 10% of full fare business and 10% of full fare economy for your lap infant. Supposedly they sometimes forget to collect this when you upgrade, but those are the rules. The 10% fares are not upgradeable with miles, and using miles for a sear on AA/UA is at the full rate, not 10%. I think BA is much better than all that.

UA/AA policy on domestic flights is that lap infants are free (for now).

Doing it a one transaction at time of booking is near impossible for non Exec Club elite.

Probably also impossible for E.C.Golds as well.

I see ZERO U inventory on expert flyer on or around the dates in question.

Doing it all in one go is not a problem. I'm just blue tier and have prevoiusly done this via the call centre as they were open jaws (so they hit you with an offline booking fee) but you can probably do it online too now.

Strange that you can't see any U inventory on LHR-JFK - normally there's plenty of space on that route. Maybe EF isn't showing good data??? Give me an idea of dates and i'll check via BAEC (although your friends can do this too as presumably they have a stash of BA miles - you can't use AA miles to upgrade on BA).