LHR upgrades
 

There seems to be no upgrade availability for LHR flights - random dates checked all the way to january 2019. Have been flying the route with BA recently, but remember that earlier it was not that difficult to find upgrade availibililty on Finnair flights to LHR. Is Finnair releasing seats closer to date? Flights to LHR seems to be full most of the time...

Do they really put non-tier members on waitlist? (teme only lists BA gold as program, maybe he also hold AY tier)

No shiny cards with Finnair anymore...

Yeah, no waitlisting for non-status members. In this case, my suggestion would be to book the flights you want, preferably as far out as possible, and then call AY during Finnish office hours. Be nice, ask nicely and Janica might contact "the other department", ie revenue management. If it doesn't work, try again later.

I have an upcoming booking HEL-LHR-HEL in March 2019, and the app shows both ways upgradeable.

I have next Sat HEL-LHR and LHR-HEL

On HEL-LHR (32B) 11 rows of Business Class and no upgrades available in app or AY site.
On LHR-HEL (32B) 2 rows of Business Class and no upgrades available in app or AY site.

I have about 10 LHR-HEL-LHR flights this year and NONE of them was able to upgrade online. Had to contact platinum at Finnair and all waitlisted to upgrade. Some of them cleared fast but still many on waiting list after weeks/months.

I'm just a basic level pleb, but website chat told me to call the UK customer service who then put me on a waitlist for my upcoming LHR-HEL flight in June. It cleared within a few hours, and no one asked or seemed to care about my status.

If they had looked at my record, they would have seen 4 flights within my membership year and not a huge amount of award points. So, I suspect they have waitlisting for everyone, as I don't think they would have been much impressed by my recent flying.

But they probably prioritise status members though.

While nice for you, I'd say this is the final proof that upgrade process is in shambles.
Waitlist used to be a tier perk and clearing off of waitlist in hours a platinum perk. As almost no availability is shown in online tool these days, majority of upgrades now goes via waitlist and they seem to clear it as soon as they can regardless of status. This means priority is reduced to "first come, first served".

Yeah, I was very much surprised about the speed, and the fact that it went through. I assumed I would have been in the bottom of a list, after all the status members had had theirs cleared. So I was prepared to wait until a few days before departure.

Not complaining, but I doubt anyone with status is happy to hear this!

I wonder if there are many other non-status people here who would be able to confirm if my case was unusual, or if this is a LHR-HEL special case, or if they are indeed changing their procedure. Definitely interested in hearing what happens to OP, but since they are BA Gold, AY might take that into consideration. (maybe this belongs to the main upgrade-thread)

Upgraded one AY1331 in December yesterday. No online availability, but Jakob on the platsku line was able to upgrade me immediately.

I have had no difficulty upgrading online this year on flights to FRA and ZRH. I think its definitely good if platinums have priority with upgrades, but at the same time think it's pity that there is hardly any online availability on LHR routes. Have not yet bought the tickets so cannot comment if BA Gold would help. Usually end up bying BA business tickets which are often around 440 euros return. Tier point wise excellent value in my opinion.

Very good way to get an upgrade is asking for it within 24 hours of booking (see the free cancellation rules). If no upgrade, no flight.

This method is exactly what I am forced to use, as the online tool can't be used anymore to plan according to availability.