Bid for upgrade experience
 

Hi all
has anyone had any experience in ITA on bid for upgrades to or from USA?
Anyone recall what was offered as minimum bid from Y to Business or Premium to Business?

Thanks!

Reviving this thread. Can anyone comment on the upgrade bid experience.

Have put in a Premium Economy - Business upgrade bid for a FCO-JFK flight in a couple of weeks. As of now the business cabin seems to be pretty wide open with 24 seats still remaining. When do they typically let you know if the upgrade bid has been accepted or rejected?

When AZ was Alitalia I had successful upgrade bids of 179€ from premium economy to business for ICN-FCO and FCO-JFK / one time the 179€ bid was rejected, but I received an op-up at checkin ;) - haven't tried it with ITA yet - but most of their policies seem to have transferred from the old Alitalia. :rolleyes:
upgrade bid success is communicated around 12 hours prior to departure.

Flight is in 4 days & there are still 23 seats left in business class. There is a good chance the cabin will be fairly empty come flying day.

I remember reading somewhere that bids can be approved (or rejected) as far out as 72 hours before the flight. Wish they would inform sooner rather than later. If the bid is rejected then I would purchase the front row seat in premium economy. Don't want to do that now since if the bid is accepted then I would not get a refund on the front row seat payment.

You can get the idea of accetable bid if you take into account 75% of the instant upgrade price. Airlines rather fly with empty cabin than to sell it for a few Euro. Catering for Business class is not cheap at all, plus all the cleaning they need to do after you also comes at a premium price. It is not just airlines who make money off premium seats, it is also the services they use to provide it.

Where do I see the instant upgrade price? The only option I see is to bid for an upgrade. The bid I have placed is about 25% over the minimum bid.

No problem if the bid is not accepted. Its a day flight so I will be perfectly happy with a front row seat in Premium Economy. Just hope I know sooner rather than later.

Strange. Did you check the ITA website? It is not the same modul for instant upgrade offers

Checked the website & re-checked my emails. No instant upgrade offer so far. The only option is to bid for the upgrade.

Both my flights to & from FCO are over 80% empty in business class. Even premium economy is only 50% full on both flights.

don't be confused when the seatmap shows 80% empty seats. since airlines have started to charge for seat reservations (also in business class) you don't have a indicaiton about the real availablility because not all passengers are willing to pay the fee, so the seats are not pre-reserved.

I know. I'm not relying on seat map availability to determine empty seats.

As of now 10 of 12 seats are available on the first flight (seat map shows all 12 seats) & 24 of 30 seats are available on the second flight (seat map shows 26 seats).

Sorry, that is wrong. ITA uses Plusgrade for the bidding service and hands them a number of seats that they can't otherwise sell at T-72h. Plusgrade notifies the airline of the winning bids. Plusgrade doesn't have any insight into the status or PCV of the bidders and goes by the highest bid. In return they get to keep some margin of the collected revenue.

I received an email around 72 hours out letting me know that the airline tried to process my upgrade but my credit card was declined so if I still wanted the upgrade then I had to reach out to my bank & then click on the link for the airline to try charging the card again.

I called my bank & they had deemed the activity suspicious so had denied the transaction. I told them the transaction was fine & they put in remarks in the system that it was approved by me & would go through when tried again.

I then clicked the link asking the airline to re-try the card. About an hour & a half later I received a similar email that the airline had tried to charge the card but it was again rejected by the bank. So I called the bank back & went through the same process to verify the transaction.

Once I was done with that I noticed there was another option in the email where I could change the card details. Not wanting a repeat with the bank denying the transaction again, I changed my card details & then clicked on the link to ask the airline to try again.

4 hours later I received an email confirming the upgrade.

Flight is tomorrow & there are still 17 seats left in business class.

Keyser, how much did you bid? This would be helpful to others.

You got the message wrong. They don't sell off the whole cabin if the minimum price is not met. The minimum comes from the cost they have if flying you in Business cabin and the airline sets the minimum. Do you really believe the airline would sell at a loss through bidding?

FCO-JFK

Minimum bid was €430. I bid €500.

Also, 3-4 of hours before I got the first email regarding the upgrade, I got a email with an instant upgrade price which was €900.