spainflyer

Went back on the IB board to research this and could find nothing in the past year.

Is IB still offering either the option to bid for an upgrade, economy to business, on a two-class aircraft, or an upgrade for a fixed price (was 450 or 500 euros in the past)?

The IB website says you can purchase an upgrade with Avios if your ticket is booked in Y, B or H and your flight is not a 4XXX, 5XXX or 7XXX number. So, no good on transatlantic flights. And that’s with Avios, not money.

The website also says you can bid for an upgrade up to five days before your flight. But it doesn’t say if you must be bidding from a specific fare bucket.

Has anyone been successful with either of these methods recently and, if so, on what route? And if a bid, care to share?

Thanks and buen viaje!

Yllanes

You can do it on some TATL flights (flights to the US are typically IB6XXX) but it's not worth it, because right now you can buy 100 000 Avios for € 1800, which would be enough for a return ticket and the booking in Y,B,H is going to cost more.

Bidding is still possible, but not on all flights. I'm not sure if you can know beforehand. Since I would never pay the € 450 bid I haven't paid much attention to it.

craigthemif

If you upgrade with Avios, there needs to be award space and the ticket needs to be highly flexible/expensive. As mentioned, you are much better off just buying all of the avios necessary for a full award. (although I suppose that triple Avios promos, status bonuses, etc. might make the maths a bit closer since you should still earn avios from the original Y ticket) Basically, upgrade only really works for people who work for cheapo companies that only pay for Y flights but are willing to pay for flexibility.

AFAIK, the bid for upgrade does not care about your booked fare code. Unlike Yllanes, I would gladly pay 500 euros for an upgrade, but never in a million years would I risk flying in IB long-haul Y by paying for an economy ticket. So I haven't tried bid for upgrade either...

spainflyer

Thanks to both CraigTM and Yllanes for the excellent advice. I did buy Avios on the Iberia Plus site this morning and in fact the deal was even better than Yllanes had said. Iberia is running a promotion until 6th November with a 30% bonus, so I got 130,000 Avios for 1800 EUR. As the Business Class ticket was 150,000 Avios plus 194 EUR, I got my round trip for under 2300 EUR, when the “Business Promocional” fare for the days I am flying is 3918 EUR.

I was initially tempted by the Groupon offer which would have been 100,000 Avios for 1245 Euros, but the FlyerTalk discussion of the T&Cs, including the two-week wait for the Avios to clear and then a 30-day limit to use them, put me off that idea.

BTW, I think you can buy only 100,000 BA Avios per year, but apparently you can buy 200,000 IB Avios. I couldn’t find the T&C on the IB Plus website but, after I bought my 100,000+30%, I clicked through again and the system told me I could buy “up to 100,000 more Avios this year.”

Anyone have experience buying up to 200,000 Avios in a year? At about 1.3846 Eurocents per Avio, it seems to me it’s not a bad deal.
^

feysul

i have flown 5 times from ORD MAD ORD in the last 7 months. i have experinced bidding and also upgrading when it is offered while checking in 24 hours in advance.

i dont know the strategy when they offer one or the other. i have bid and lost it then was able to upgrade the day of departure at Barajas or Ohare.

At ohare they charge 400 Euros. last week at Barajas i paid 499.99 Euros.

considering i paid 1100 USD for my fare i think its worth it. Especially when you are flying to MAD from US. it helps to get a lie flat seat. also the business class lounge benefits are great. if you take advantage of it. Pretty Good breakfast in MAD and the use of showers come in handy. the lounge at Ohare is not a big deal. MAD is nice. i prefer the lounge at 4S, much better breakfast than Terminal 4.

Good luck. let me know if you have any more questions on this subject.

ChocolateFactory

I'll fly BRU-MAD-NRT on Friday (November 4) and then NRT-MAD-FRA a couple days later (November 9).

Some friends convinced me to book and I was unaware that S class tickets can't be upgraded for avios.
I really don't want to sit in an economy cabin for 14 hours, so I have bid 490 € for each of the MAD-NRT/NRT-MAD segments (flying economy on the European segments is fine for me).

The MAD-NRT flight seems completely sold out according to ExpertFlyer.com (bidding for the outbound flight wasn't even available the last time I checked, a couple weeks ago), in all booking classes!

On the NRT-MAD flight, there are still lots of business class seats available.

What would you recommend in order to secure an upgrade at the lowest possible price?
I'm currently only OW Sapphire (BA Silver) and I don't know my chances of being upgraded due to overbooking...
I can still change my bids.

This was an error fare originally...

LupineChemist

Minimum bid is almost always enough. I've only done it a few times but it's always been accepted.

feysul

feysul

24 hours before your flight to NRT I would go to Barajas Airport and go the the Iberia "Business" Sales Counter. this counter is a stand alone counter right by the Business Class checkin counters. I would approach them and ask them you want to upgrade to Business. they will tell you if you are eligible or not. it will be a flat. i paid 499 Euro from MAD to ORD. The flight to Japan may be longer and they may ask for more money. Good luck

ChocolateFactory

The thing is that I will be flying out of BRU, so I can't just go to the counter at MAD.
But I think I'll just give them a call...

Innocent Abroad

This is also my experience.

ChocolateFactory

Ok, I just called Iberia. Turns out you can't even upgrade for cash if you didn't book directly with Iberia.
I'm just sitting here shaking my head in disbelief at this airline.
I'm really not surprised by the fact that a lot of people say their bids for an upgrade have been turned out, only to be offered an upgrade for a lower amount during check-in.
Seems like Iberia don't like making money...

Anyhow, as my only options are bidding and upgrading at the airport, I just tried to find out what the lowest possible bid is... Only to find it is substantially higher than when I first tried. I think before it was possible to enter 400 € or so - now you have to bid at least 450 €...
Anyway, I set my bids to 491 and 492 € respectively (as there are no seats available on ExpertFlyer), hope the upgrades will clear...
Since the outbound flight is on Friday, I guess I should get an answer shortly.

nameleiderschonvergeben

I booked the same errorfare and currently in Japan right now. Also tried to upgrade my outbound flight at the airport, but wasn't possible, even the checkin lady said that there is one seat available. For my return flight is next week I am currently bidding for an upgrade.

ChocolateFactory

They rejected my bid for the outbound upgrade today.
Really disappointing.

But ExpertFlyer shows 3J and 3C (i.e. 6 business-class seats) available, and in the seat map there are 5 seats that aren't taken yet, so I really hope I'll at least be able to upgrade at check-in...

As for the return flight, the business class cabin is only half full, so I'm confident that the upgrade should clear for that at least...

eugnk

I would like to add a datapoint for my next TLV->MAD->SCL flight.

From the booking moment and until bidding period end only a bid for TLV->MAD sector was possible. My rather low bid was eventually successful.

During OLCI a cool 530$ upgrade offer for MAD->SCL sector appeared.

BTW, OLCI upgrade does work via mobile application as well.