cerps343

I'm booking travel through my company's travel portal which requires me to book economy (taking the flight on either Delta or United). However, I would prefer to fly F for this trip. Is it possible to book the flight and then once it's booked, pay the difference out of pocket for a seat in F? And if not F, could I pay the difference for a Comfort+ seat? Most of the articles I found on Google discussed upgrading with miles rather than cash.

On my previous trips, I had to wait until I was airside and go to the customer service desk and pay to be put on the upgrade list for F when I would gladly pay up front to be confirmed in F

Grogs

You can definitely buy up afterwards, but there are catches. AFAIK, you're not actually buying an F ticket, just the right to sit in F on those particular flights. If you have to change flights due to weather or something, you could end up back in coach with little or no refund. The other problem is that there's a lot of variation in those offers. F might cost $200 more at booking, but the buy up (FCM) price might be $500 or could be $100. A cleaner way to do it would be to call in during the first 24 hours and just pay the fare difference to actually be rebooked in F. That's more of a grey area though because they're actually issuing a different ticket than what the company bought. I would call your travel office and make sure they are OK with that before I tried it.

3Cforme

Delta customers, including those who purchased tickets via third parties, can now purchase premium products like Delta Comfort+ and First Class as an add-on purchase for all or part of their journey to further customize their upcoming travel experience. And customers can use a different method of payment than used for the original ticket purchase to do so.

https://news.delta.com/customers-now...anage-upgrades

cerps343

3Cforme

As he noted, it depends on how quickly you do it. It's a year-old policy.

jdrtravel

That's not true. You absolutely can call in and just buy up to an F ticket. The thing to avoid is clicking on the buy up offers online, those can throw things. Call reservations and pay for a buy up. It will be a real first class ticket.

jrl767

this ... first inquiry should be to your corporate travel office; if the answer is "yes" they probably have a system in place to handle it with few if any administrative complications

my employer uses Concur; for domestic travel I have to book flights that come out within $25 of the lowest coach fare AND justify any travel not on a "Preferred Airline" (AA and DL, not sure about UA, but AS definitely isn't on that list); if I want to upgrade, I can speak to a company travel rep who will take my personal credit card info for the difference

I made the mistake of using the "[email protected]" email one evening to inquire about the cost of an upgrade (rather than leaving a voicemail for a company travel rep), and woke up the next morning to an email confirmation indicating the F fare charged to my company credit card ... needless to say, I got that reversed rather quickly, and got a profuse apology from the Concur supervisor for the night shift agent thinking that I actually wanted to purchase the upgrade

my last trip, the Q fare through Concur was about 10% less than the Q fare on the DL website ... the FCM amount in My Trips on the app was reasonable, and the corporate travel rep secured the upgrade for the same price DL was offering (I was expecting about $10 more, which would have been a ~10% discount off the published A fare)

flyerCO

Not true. It's not a F ticket only if you use the seat map and do an a la carte seat upgrade on only one flight to F. If you click the upgrade all segments, it upgrades to an actual F ticket. All phone agents can do is actual upgrades to an actual F ticket. They can't even sell the al a carte seat upgrades.

The big issue is that if OP calls, then DL will have to take control of the ticket. $50 for this. Also means employer TA will no longer be able to make changes to ticket. Thus make sure they're ok with it.

MSPeconomist

cerps343

Refundable fare isn't an issue. The fares booked through Carlson always state they are non-refundable. However, it sounds like the best piece of advice is to just call Carlson, explain what I want to do, and if it's possible, have them take care of it all. That way if there's any IRROPS during the trip, they'll have control of the ticket and I won't be stuck later on down the road.

MSPeconomist

Often1

This simply untrue. It may be that the tickets you book through your corporate TA are always non-refundable, but that is simply because it is your employer's policy being implemented by its contractor, e.g. Carlson.

Many businesses, for all manner of reasons, require refundable tickets and it may be that those tickets can be booked into an F seat for very little (and sometimes less). But, the F seat is non-refundable and thus violates company policy. If you cancel or change, the ticket may not come back as a cash refund.

This is why, the first step is to check with your employer's travel people, the ones who administer the TA contract to determine what the company's policies are. Some employers care a great deal and some could care less.

Another conversation is the larger question of whether your company would direct the TA to accept two forms of payment for non-compliant, e.g. F tickets. In this exercise, you provide a personal CC to the corporate TA and are charged the difference between what you choose to book and the amount you are permitted to spend. The TA issues your preferred ticket, documents it all and you are done.

MSPeconomist

There are a few employers that forbid FC travel for business trips, even as a free FF upgrade. OP should not assume that he/she is allowed to change the ticket to FC, even if paying with personal funds.

jrl767

and that is also why the best course of action is to ask corporate travel FIRST

jdrtravel

And even in this situation, I still think DL would attempt to give you confirmed F seating for that segment if you had to switch flights due to IRROPS. It's been a long time since I've heard of anyone having trouble with this issue or with any GAP fares being treated as Y fares, unless there were just not F seats available.

I think this may have changed recently. What leads me to believe this is that I recently called to upgrade a flight and one agent quoted me the the price of a buy up to an A fare, and another agent quoted me the price that was the same as the online buy up (which was higher). I then pressed her and she said something like "Oh I would need to price it out as a rebooking" or something like that. I did not ask about al a carte, but I did seem like the phone agents now have access to that inventory and pricing, so it's important to clarify how they are pricing an upgrade when you call. Best thing to do is to do a new online search for F on that route you want and see what the F fare would be, and make sure you are not being charged more than the difference between your Y fare and that F fare.