Youngtraveldude

I got excited today when booking a paid AMS-ORD RT that I could use FB miles to upgrade Mrs. Youngtraveldude and I to business because there was lots of availability for booking an Award ticket for my flight. But then I sadly remembered that award inventory is different than upgrade inventory...anyway, any data points on the average one-way cost for a FB miles upgrade to/from the US (ideally ORD)?

danfl44

Call KLM, and ask them about update availability and prices on your possible dates. As far as I know, you need paid O class availability. FB Plat members can also upgrade to Z, which is quite widely available.
They do actually still have charts with upgrade-prices, one agent told me a while ago. I was quoted 57k for AMS-LAX, where the original ticket would be in deep-discount V class.
There are reports of people getting credited business class XP's after upgrading their flight this way.

Youngtraveldude

Thanks. Yeah, I was under the same impression that I need O inventory. Z has tons of availability. I am Delta Platinum, which on the reservation on the FB site that shows as FB Platinum. But assuming I still can’t use the Z inventory. That’s exactly our scenario, deep-discount V. 57K isn’t terrible. The guy on the phone said even if O was available, it would be 120K to upgrade, which seemed high. Will hope for some O availability to pop up...

glennhaak

I actually did last trip (as you know ) both my upgraded legs (AMS-SIN & DPS-AMS) credited as 36XP instead of 12 each

atflyer

Interesting since upgrades usually should give the original XPs. And to OP - with the dynamic pricing system they cannot have fixed charts with costs for upgrade with miles anymore. Any Y ticket can be upgraded, in my experience usually for a lot of miles (the quotes I got implied the same amount of miles as it would cost to buy J class with miles). I guess that if they have many J unsold, you may have luck with a cheaper upgrade in miles.

EvD86

For their longest flight AMS-EZE their FB-team recently stated their wasn't any availability. However, should it become available the upgrade would cost 94k FB miles.

Youngtraveldude

Thanks! As expected, pricey! For this trip was able to take advantage of a FB Promo and got my wife in J one way and economy the way back for only 63K FB miles RT. Now for me I’ll just hope for a DoD upgrade chance with a decent price tag....