FTers w/recent experiences getting BF seats to NRT - please help
 

Hello FTers, we need your help, please:

Mrs. CAL and I are planning to go to NRT in late November (11-18 thru 11-30). We are experienced at the usa-NRT upgrade process, having flown the route several times over the past couple of years. (FWIW, at this moment, we're both Gold Elite, but have previously been both Plats when we booked.) We generally buy B-class (or the former H-class) tix and upgrade with miles. We have not booked anything yet, pending the help of respondents to this post.

I've been looking at loads in the BF cabin since June (via pda.com) and found shockingly low loads - flights leaving with 12-20 seats out of 50 filled have been fairly common. Of late, loads look to have recovered somewhat, but are nothing like they used to be, with the BF cabin sold to 35 or 40 2 weeks out, and us being waitlisted and finally clearing u/g just a week or 2 prior to flight time.

So as we prepare for our trip this year, we guessed that upgrading would be substantially easier than in the past. We wonder if anyone has any recent experiences upgrading paid tix to NRT?

We also checked for full-out BF reward seats and found... NOTHING THE ENTIRE MONTH OF NOVEMBER. Any recent experiences with obtaining full-reward BF tix (ie. miles only)?

Many thanks,
CALfly5

It should open up in the next couple of weeks, moreso 30 days out.

Hmm...I've been waiting for upgrade seats to open up for my Turkey Weekend run since last February and not a single BF upgrade seat has been released into inventory.

Both my in\out bound B fares over christmas have cleared ^

Call in and ask to be waitlisted for the upgrade. I've upgraded between IAH and NRT a few times; normally I've had to call in and waitlisted for the upgrade because the website doesn't show upgrade as available. Normally the waitlist clears and I get the upgrade a day or so before.

I was looking at doing a Turkey Week hop to Japan or HK and was noticing some odd upgrade behavior when checking availability online.

Logged on as a Plat, I found no upgrade seats when I did a basic search - but when I changed the search to 'Advanced' and entered 'B' as my fare basis, upgrade seats to NRT and HKG magically appeared. When I changed the search to the lowest fare option, the same flights showed no upgrade availability.

Perhaps I'm just not remembering something - but is upgrade seat availability tied to the fare bucket you choose, or do certain fares (Y, B, M) pull from a different pool?

No and no. I'm guessing it is a co.com bug where it is still looking at Y/B/M upgrades as booking into CU/AN/AN rather than the actual booking class that those upgrades go in to. Did you try going all the way through to actually process the upgrade?

I tried a dummy booking from a B fare and it books into R for both Int'l and domestic legs. The bad part is it wants 25k each way, even though my dummy booking had no availability in BF for the return segment - if the waitlist didn't clear, 25K miles plus $100 is a big price to pay for a short hop from EWR to FLL.

The good news is that you'd get your money and miles back if the longhauls didn't clear. On a BF upgrade reward one is only charged if the actual BF segment clears. If not you get to keep the other upgrades for free. :-:

I don't know how accurate the 30 day rule is anymore.

I've been waitlisted for a SEA-IAH-NRT run in Oct since Feb, when I booked it. 30 days has come and gone and nothing has cleared. I've seen them slowly increasing A availability, but my upgrades are sitting there and when attempting to make a new res with 'Onepass Milage Upgrade' all the flights come up as unavailable.

You may be right now that I think about it. when booking my last trip reward seats really opened up 14 - 21 days out.

I also do remember them saying the 30-day rule had changed to be a bit more dynamic a while back.

Now, what that means I have no idea, but I'm suspecting it may have to do with the day of week, phase of the moon, and solar flareups.

I purchased a B fare Sea-IAH-NRT RT Dec 5-13 and have been checking for milage upgrade everyday since Feb.
I will add myself to the waitlist after they do away with the $100 CO-pay and hopfully it will clear,will be plat. after my ob flight ( alas my third trip to Palau this year.....via NRT)

And to think I thought it was only Revenue Management playing with Ouija boards!

Have you checked whether the $100 fee goes away for existing bookings, or just new bookings made after the change date? This is worth checking - the CO page is ambiguous on this point.