Upgrading with miles, Denver to AMS
 

Hello,
I am taking a trip to Amsterdam in the spring with my wife, and I am trying to fly business class. I have about 200k UR points I was hoping to use in this endeavor. It seems my flight options are United or KLM, which is actually a code share with Delta on most options. I think because there are no direct flights It doesn't give me the option of a word travel on KLM. And Delta and United the tickets are required and absurd amount of points. So, I want to buy it ticket and economy and use my points to upgrade to business. It looks like on United I can pay $500 plus $20,000 points. However, on KLM I can't figure out how many points it will take me to upgrade, and if it's even possible. Has anyone done this before? I'm nervous to buy the KLM ticket in case I am not able to upgrade or it takes too many points. I've tried talking to KLM customer service but they can't tell me how many points it will take to upgrade before I buy the ticket. Any advice out there? Thanks in advance!

Flying Blue now has a dynamic pricing system. Therefore, the "cost" of upgrading isn't fixed; it depends on the circumstances. Only when you have an issued ticket will they be able to determine how much an upgrade would cost, if it would even be possible to upgrade.

Upgrading using miles on FB is a poor use of miles. First of all, although in theory you can upgrade from any economy fare class to business, it is much more difficult to do so than it is to just book a business class seat outright. In many cases, it just won't be possible to upgrade using miles; and when it is possible, you will end up paying far more in cash overall, and will use almost as many miles as if you had just booked using miles to redeem directly into the business class cabin.

I would therefore strongly advise that you abandon all thought of buying an economy ticket for cash if your intention is to travel in business class. If you are already struggling to redeem into J directly, then you are not going to be able to do so by restricting yourself to a particular economy ticket on a particular economy flight.

Upgrading using miles makes sense if you are stuck on employee/client tickets provided for you in economy; i.e. when you have no say in the ticket you are provided with. It's always a lottery as to whether an upgrade will actually be available, but at least in these cases, you have not paid for the ticket, and had no choice but to accept the ticket, and therefore seeing if an upgrade is available means you may improve a bad situation.

However, if you are fully in control of your itinerary - as you are in this case - and you want to travel in J, then the worst possible thing you can do right now is to buy yourself an economy ticket, as the chances are that you will not be able to "escape" from your economy booking.

The KLM agent was right, since AF/KL moved to dynamic pricing it can cost you any number of miles to upgrade. But not always, upgrades are available. One 'trick' that seems to work to find availability, is to check the cost of a regular award ticket with Flying Blue Miles at https://www.flyingblue.nl/nl/flights/reward-tickets and then check the reward calendar for your dates, if the lowest amount is available, you'll have a good chance of upgrades being available.

Edit: Fully agree with irishguy28 above

They actually can (as they have a list of miles needed for upgrade from certain classes), you just have to ask the right questions, or at least give them some input. What they mean is, that unless they know the booking class, they can't quote you anything. At that point, you can just ask whether there is any "O" availability (this is the upgrade class for non-Flying Blue Platinum members (as they also have the "Z" inventory at their disposal).
Just look on expedia.com for the ticket you'd like to book (expedia shows the booking classes), and then call KLM, stating that you'd like to ask how much it would be in FB miles to upgrade from booking class "(state here the booking class that you found on expedia)", to Business (booking class "O") and if they have any inventory.
Good luck on your travels!

I'm afraid I don't have that option. Bottom line I only have 200k points, and it's not enough to buy a business ticket with points ought. At least in United, it only takes 20k points (plus cash) to upgrade. But it makes the business class tickiet cost 1400 instead of 8000. I was hoping for the same thing on KLM. They have a business class ticket from MSP to AMS for 120k points. But I was hoping to book it out of Denver and then just upgrade that segment.

Sadly that's no longer true, O class isn't confirmed miles upgrade availability. its a combination of cash and miles. the only way I've reliability found is to look at the FB site, first find out what the Business class cheapest fare is(classic fare, using the cost tool). then look at the flights on the day. This also isn't foolproof as I've also managed to upgrade on days where the classic fair wasn't available. But i'm plat, so may have extra access.