I have yet to experience this myself, it has been tight, however, some upgrades clearing at checkin, some at the gate.

But it's a clear change in policy = last reason to stick to AY Plus, even as secondary OW program, is fast fading away. :td::td::td:

I use my points on business class upgrades when flying to/from Spain. My last four flights have gone like this after being put on waiting list when calling.

Check-in desk at HEL doesn't say anything but when I point out that I am on waiting list for business, they upgrade me.

Check-in desk at BCN doesn't say anything but when I point out that I am on waiting list for business they say "maybe they upgrade you on gate". At gate all kind of beeping and flashing and they say "oh, you are staff? welcome". "No, I am not staff but on waiting list for business" "oh, seat 1A then, welcome".

Check-in desk at HEL doesn't say anything but when I do the above again, they tell they can upgrade me and do that. I also point out that lately when flying to Spain luggage with priority tags has arrived last instead of first. They tell that must have been some temporary error in Spain. At arrival in Madrid my luggage arrives last and without priority tag.

And lastly my return from BCN to HEL was upgraded Friday, over a week before my flight. Never seen that before.

OT: No more priority tags. Priority is printed to to the edge of the regular tag and hardly discernible. A true enhancement!

This might just reflect the fact that AY+ service centre rearely is informed about changes. Actually, when I push them to answer such question, they never answer yes/no, they always just say "it is nothing we have been informed about".

In this case, if AY removed seats from upgrade space, it is nothing the service centre would need to be informed about. If they see space, they book. If they don't see space, they waitlist. You can remove 50% of upgrade space and the procedure at AY service centre would still be the same.

In the past, clearing upgrades when no space was shown on the website might be either website not working properly or revenue management releasing upgrade space on demand. The way some of my upgrades have cleared in the past suggest the latter have been done to me.

Since we see many reports of upgrades for cash promoted lately, I find this case rather clear cut. I "know" where our upgrades have gone.
And I don't have time to google it right now, but I suspect the degradation of upgrades on the NZ-program happened while Paterson were working for them.

This is my take too.
Sadly, flying AY J and crediting elsewhere is insane. So the logic for me would be not just stop crediting but to stop flying AY. That is a bit more complicated swap.

Not neccessarily. AY+ is 225% mileage, while BA or AA is 125%. Seems like a big difference, BUT in reality 12.500 avios/miles probably gets you further than 22.500 AY+ points, especially if AY upgrade availability really goes away.

The OW partner redemption prices with AY+ are plain crazy and when redeeming on their own metal you still pay full YQ.

Also OWE status is faster with AA/BA than with AY, even flying AY C

West- and southbound easy, eastbound takes some determination to switch to BA. Of course from CPH you have better access to JL/CX/MH :D

AY+ OWE in ~2.5 r/t l/h flights - even direct ones, i.e. 5 segments. How can you beat that with AA/BA?

AY plat is 150k = 5 l/h returns (5x2x15k) to ICN, 4,5 to NRT. Slightly less, because of the elite bonus one gets after hitting Silver. The same 5 returns with BA would be 5x280=1400 TP, so AY+ indeed wins by a very small margin :)

(I am used to calculate HEL-LHR-FarEast, which reaps 480TP per return, so 3 returns + a hop to TLL takes me to OWE)

AY J credited to AY+ is actually 250% mileage (plat tier bonus applies on top of COS) Also, as they have zones with fixed points rather than flown distances, it is even better for some routes.

So yes, for me AY plat is only 3 LH r/t (3 * 52 500 = 157 500), as the plat tier and the Euro-segment of each longhaul helps out quite a bit. Naturally, for a HEL based flyer it is BA that has the advantage of extra points for connecting segment. But I haven't found any better way to OWE than this.

Also for me, award points (avios et.c.) has very little value, as airlines can and will make it difficult to use them once you've earned them. I "never" book award flights, as they take too much planning to find and book and are too limited in when/where/how they can be used.
AY-upgrades have on the other hand been easy and dependable - I book and pay my flights and AY upgrade my service. It can be done in a few minutes. Suits me very well.

Now seems like AY has limited the upgrades in a way that makes it useless to fly and credit to AY:
Example Japan: Upgrades available often only tuesdays-thursdays.
Another pattern is: Days with upgrades available only has YBH fares available (though sold as "Economy saver" but books into YBH and priced accordingly).

So if I am limited to book full priced Y-fares and travel on off peak dates just to upgrade the family, I might as well book all in discounted J and avoid the agony. So I'm toying the idea of going statusless and instead book J more freely. As it looks now, QR / EK / EY suits this base strategy very well.

Interesting how AY+ programme made me less connected to AY...

Sorry, mixed up 2x and 4x.

Just to summarize AY J HEL-NRT (from scratch):

• Finnair Plus: 34000p r/t - after 5 r/t you're at 146200p (150k for OWE)
• BAEC: 280 TP r/t - after 5 r/t you're at 1400p (1500 for OWE)
• AAdvantage: 12150 EQM r/t - after 5 r/t you're at 60750 (100k for OWE)

Actually no, as tier bonus kicks in after 40k and 90k.

AY J HEL-NRT at nominal 34k points per r/t you get 146 200 after 4 r/t:

Just as I said earlier - 4,5 r/t to NRT. On the BKK route you need to fly home, too :)

You do get to renew yr plat with 3 CPH-HEL-NRT - but so do I with 3 HEL-LHR-NRT/HND, with a very good chance to upgrade to F (for those avios I earn on the same flights ^) Admittedly there's some backtracking here, but I use BA a lot for the Middle-East as well (where there is no AY service, so earnings would be a meagre 125%)

However, I think that we all agree here that if/when AY really kills the upgrade for points availability, they actually kill their only aspect where they shine/shone (?)over the other FFPs

OT - but I'm been trying to access ba.com to find out the tier points table to make my own comparisons. I have a spreadsheet that quickly calculates number of flights needed for tiers on several airlines and programmes. And now I wanted to add BAEC. But there is no table but BA provides a link to the BEAC tier points calculator.

However the calculator page just says "Sorry, try later" and have said so the whole day. According to a thread in BA forum it has been like this for weeks. The FT-suggested workaround is to log in or to ask another FTer about how many tier points a route yields. BA apparently can't be bothered. Just another fine example why I won't be looking at BA anytime soon.

From the BA board

Your guide to the Executive Club, attaining status and earning Avios

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-X...EarnTP2013.png

Thx!


Howcome, since most of far east is less than 6000 mi? All of China, Japan, HKG and BKK is less than 6000 mi and thus 140TP
http://www.gcmap.com/map?P=lhr-hkg;l...X=720x360&PM=*