Sudden Upgrade
 

If there is a God for weary, harassed air travellers, he smiled on me a few days ago. :-: I had an unused JP Upgrade Voucher (on becoming Silver) for almost a year, expiring on March 31 which I had not been able to use for some reason or the other despite many K+ class flights. Twice I was told no upgrade seats were available. I even tried emailing them to extend the validity but they refused. Anyway I was traveling from Mumbai on Mar 27 and at the JP Privilege check in, mysteriously got upgraded to J class on a Jet Konnect Flight. I even heard someone else get upgraded on the counter beside me. Anyway flight was pleasant and ironically the sandwiches I had bought for the flight were not required :p

Nonetheless, it got me wondering on what basis upgrades are offered.
- Is it totally random?
- Is it based on some sort of 'good karma' status they have on their passenger status (tagged to the JP number no doubt)
- Is it done only to those eligible for the Silver/Gold/Plat check in counter?
- Does it happen only if the flight is overbooked? (I had already webchecked in for that flight and it didnt seem too full)

Anyone else have any such experiences? Would love to hear them. I've never actually tried my luck asking for an upgrade though.

Did they take your voucher in return? If yes, you received the upgrade because there was space in J and that there wasnt anyone with higher status requesting upgrade...

if no voucher was taken, this is an op-up which to me is a rarity on Jet Airways.. only reason for op-up's is that you are a celebrity (smile.. sign..) or flight was completely full in Y and there werent that many elites on the flight as you being silver got an upgrade.. if you did get an op-up on 9W - i'd say go get a lottery ticket that very day... its def 1 in many (million/billion) chance.. IMHO atleast..

in all probability it was an op-up....with jet these are extremely rare....

*Very* rare nowadays...

Not really, I've gotten about 8 of them in the past 2 months flying in and out of Goa during peak season.

When the flight is overbooked they have no choice but to upgrade frequent flyers apart from putting them in jump seats or the cargo hold.

pretty lucky....i've gotten 4 in my 7 years as platinum....

Goa's always a mess with outbound flights perpetually overbooked. Also whenever I'm flying BOM-GOI back home, I pick 9W626 which is a direct connection from the LHR-BOM flight and Jet sells those Y seats really hard in the UK so again that flight tends to get overbooked.

Got a few on BLR-GOI also but again that's all in Dec-Jan or a long weekend when Goa is packed.

No, I'm so sick of refusals that I stopped trying with the voucher in Feb. This was a total fluke. I'm definitely sure the flight was not overbooked, because despite being webchecked in, I asked if a first row Y seat was available and the officer said yes, but middle row to which I said no. She then smiled and said I was upgraded to J. This is the second time in 5 yrs this has happened. First time was on Coimbatore - Mumbai on an Air Sahara flight (at that time just bought by Jet). Those aircraft had no J class tickets (so the J class seats had no meal service, etc. ) and they upgraded based on appearances alone.

Same here - almost exactly the same.

I used to get them on the AMD-BOM-AMD sector years ago, but not flying this route any longer...

Air Sahara biz was *awesome* ^ - Jet was getting pressured by their biz product and even had to implement the cart service that Air Sahara was providing at the time...