mtkeller

Waitlisting for upgrades with miles/SWUs on AF/KL has not been possible for a long time (if ever). If you didn't find upgrade space by the day prior to travel, you would be sitting in your ticketed class of service.

MSPeconomist

5,000 dollars (or Euros) one way would seem to be enough to purchase a regular business class ticket prettily easily, so why bother trying to upgrade from such an expensive fare?

javabytes

+1... especially if O inventory is now as restricted as it sounds. Should be able to find a discount J fare for less than that.

vgb2001

Upgrades at the gate are not possible.
the complication comes from the origin of the ticket:
AF has 3 PV fares: A, S W (A being the cheapest and W the most expensive)
DL sells only 1 PV they call W. It usually matches the A price and inventory.

AF S or W and DL W used to be upgradable in advance, using 15k miles or 1 PU503. For DL to be able to upgrade, they had to re-code the flight under the AF flight number (now officially a AF W) and re-issue the ticket. O space needed to be available.

For now, all upgrades are being suspended and O space has all but disappeared (making not only upgrades but also simple business class award redemption on AF impossible). Some reports indicate that O may be available for DL flyers to grab 10 months out (next june?).

Re. the upgrade process, my guess is that DL and AF are working out something so DL will sell high end PF fare that will be upgradable (equivalent to AF S or W), while keeping cheap DL W non upgradable.
Now for the O availability, that's a different story. Will it ever come back close to what it used to be?

vgb2001

We are complaining because one skymiles benefit has been rescinded without notice, even as people had already purchased W fare (AF or DL, does not matter) with the goal to upgrade. No solution has been offered for pax in this situation.
We are also complaining because because AF has also drastically cut off award availability to DL pax. This is another skymiles benefit that is gone, adding to the devaluation of the skymiles program.

All in all, AF/DL/KL are supposed to work together in this TATL joint venture. Does not seem like it's working to me...

GUWonder

Actually they seem to be working all together. It's that working together that has made this situation to work out as it has, at the expense of customers yet again.

Cortina Airlines

If you have a 006 DL-emited ticket with DL coded flights: Y, B and M are upgradable with Delta Skymiles or Flying Blue Miles. I'm not exactly sure if you'd upgrade from Economy to Premium Voyageur or Affaires (anyone?) Availability is different depending on what type of miles you want to use.

If you have a 057 AF-emited ticket with AF coded flights: W and S are upgradable from Premium Voyageur to Affaires. The seat allocation is better if you use Flying Blue Miles (it's 16,500 per segment and you can actually purchase the miles you need). I've never tried using SkyMiles to upgrade an AF-emited ticket so not sure you can make it happen (anyone?).

Generally speaking, you need the international reissuing desk to reissue the ticket and pull the miles of you're doing skymiles. Flying Blue, on the other hand, modifies your reservation to O class and emails you an upgrade voucher you show at the airport. In the mean time your ticket reissuing is pending, which I find kind of stressful.

Your chances to upgrade at the gate are close to zero with SkyMiles (they require you do it 24 hours prior the flight) but are descent with Flying Blue Miles if your fare is upgradable. They actually open some seat the day before the flight.

Dieuwer

I'm interested in the latter.
But you still need "O" class availability...?

Cortina Airlines

You do, but allocation for FlyingBlue members is usually pretty good and they keep opening seats as the day of the flight nears.

Also, you can totally pull the miles from a FlyingBlue account but still get the mileage credit on another SkyTeam FFP (like SkyMiles if that is where you wanna build status). They'll be a bit confused but you should insist and they'll do it because the debit for the upgrade and the credit for the mileage are totally different things.

MSPeconomist

So maybe the new strategy is to buy an S fare class PV ticket from AF, open a FB account and buy miles, and then use the purchased FB miles to upgrade the S fare from PV to Affaires, while crediting the flights to DL for the MQMs. This would use the O class inventory that AF makes available to its own FB members and give a decent chance of getting the upgrade right before the flight, but one would need enough time to receive and print the emailed upgrade voucher before going to the airport.

Is the voucher sent by email when you request the upgrade or when it clears? Also, can you waitlist or must one set EF alerts or keep checking back? Is this done on line or must one call AF? I assume that DL DM agents in the USA cannot process such tickets and upgrades.

Dieuwer

Any FlyingBlue member?

Under what credentials would you buy the S fare?

MSPeconomist

What do you mean by "credentials"? I presume I could use the AF USA website, one of my normal travel credit cards, and my USA passport. AFAIK there's no AF requirement to be a FB elite in order to use FB miles to upgrade from PV to Affaires on AF marketed and AF operated flights using a ticket purchased from AF.

Dieuwer

I mean, would you enter your Skymiles number during the reservation, your FlyingBlue number, or no number at all?

MSPeconomist

I would attempt to do what the previous poster in this thread asserted would work and ask AF to enter a FB number in one field and my DL elite number is a different field. I've obviously never tried this, but there are posts here stating that it will work.

Dieuwer

Which previous post? What fields?