Upgrade from P and Z to First coming
 

It will come back soon. Same procedure like LX. I was told by LH without mentioning a specific date.

That would be great. I'll remember where I heard it first if when it happens!

Overdue !
Some of these P for punishment fares which earn same as Y miles are far from cheap ! That you can also not upgrade them with Evouchers is :td:

Good for LX they never went down this customer bashing route ^

Why should LH do this?
1. F is, at least on all the flights I fly F (mainly to/from US), always full.
2. Number of flights / city pairs having F is going to be reduced (A340-600 replacement with A350, most of A330 getting rid of F).

From an LH point of view there would not be any economical sense to do so.

I assume it's more a dream, than reality.

I can see it making sense in LH's world exactly because it won't be usable by flyers. Think about it. No F availability (because of no existence of F or simply because of no availability), then no negative economic impact. An unreachable carrot on the end of a stick. In fact, LH has retained a sucker who might have booked with a different airline, if it weren't for a contrivance.

This dream will come true. It was promised by C. Spohr himself on a LH event recently.

Doesn't affect me directly but this is great news for most... I think restrictive premium fares as a concept are nonsense and take away from the premium experience...

Next let's lose non-refundable First Class fares... sure, charge the cancellation fee, but there's nothing First Class about a fare which can't be changed.

Which event?
Did you attend the event?

LH event in DUS, I have attended myself.

Any word on when? Still have eVouchers to burn...

hmmm. Interesting. Not sure this makes sense though. With the upcoming huge F capacity reductions ex-FRA it'll be tough enough to get upgrades from a C-class fare ... not sure they will be a lot of joy from P/Z.

It never made sense to exclude P and Z from upgrades, so it's the right decision.

To allow upgrades from P and Z in general doesn't mean that there will be availability. But there are enough routes, where the passenger load factor in F is low.

Totally agree that there should be upgrades vom P/Z to F, but where do you see low load factors? I have flown LH F on 4 different routes (RT) this year and the cabins were always at least 4/8, usually more. West coast USA 7/8 or 8/8.

Yes, SFO and LAX are often full or close to be full. But even there awards are available. And if there's availability for awards, it should also be possible to get an upgrade.

I.e. HND and BKK have quite low load factors in F.

4/8 on some routes & you don’t think that warrants a change ?
Try FRA-EZE- FRA I was able to get this on Lifemiles & therefore ahead of LH SEN or HON on a P or Z ticket wanting to upgrade.

LH need to take care of their elites first irrespective of booking class as LX have always done 👍

Agree

The current A fare ex MAN or BHX to SIN is refundable at 418GBP & changeable

The last 2 companion tickets in F that I have bought, ex WAW and ex MXP, were neither refundable nor changeable.

Exactly, they should allow upgrades from P and Z. But not because of low load factors, rather because they value us. ^

Everytime in LX and LH F to/from JFK past few years alone or maybe 1 or 2 others in F SIN from FRA on the otherhand Fu;;

Yeah, but who would waste an upgrade on the short hop to NYC? ;)

I would! Also for to/ from HKG LX/LH invariably almost half full ZRH/MUC/FRA Don't bother with BKK its like SIN From SFO-ZRH is OK if I wanna earn more points from AUSTRALIA to TLV, but its usually fully of those crass twenty something IT s;aves, and with the demise of Global First to/from Australia my 6 GPUs are used on LH!!!!!! Why bother with 2 Evouchers except for LX when you can use a free Global on LH!!

I seriously doubt LH will allow UA MP GPUs to be used for P/Z fares, the plans seem to be a system similar to LX allowing M&M members to upgrade from P/Z using evouchers or a higher mileage rate.

My usual route is FRA-JNB. Currently a biz to F upgrade is 50k iirc. A one way award is only 85k, so where would this fit in? It’s hard to see how it would be worth paying 65k or 70k when one could have an outright award for only a bit more. Unless of course a devaluation is on the cards... or maybe my particular region would just be a bad use for this if it ever comes to fruition.

Even 4/8 is a low load factor for an airline with a load factor of about 82%.

Not really that hard. OPM flyers.

Admittedly I do tend to forget that there are people with tons of miles to burn, and as you say OPM fliers, who probably wouldn’t care much about a few thousand extra miles.

But is there a big subset of these which are regularly flying in P/Z? I would have thought those types of people are generally flying C, D, J already, so this enhancement wouldn’t really be of interest to them.

LX seems to pull it off... I think the main charm is the possibility to use evouchers on P/Z.

Exactly! The best use of eVouchers at present is either LX P/Z to F or LH Y+ to C. The ability to upgrade LH P/Z to F will be very welcome.

Not necessarily. But yes, there would be room for some awards on 4/8 flights.

Sometimes it's just unpredictable: Not too long ago, I wanted to book a companion award MUC-LAX and was initially told I wouldn't be able to get 2 seats, as revenue management predicts to sell 7 F-seats on that route that day. Booked two seats in J instead and after a while the waitlist for two seats in F cleared. The MUC-LAX-flight ended up being 3/8, which it hardly ever seems to be (most of my other experiences were 7/8 or 8/8). With so few seats available in total, it is hard to always make the right predictions or generalize from one-time experiences.

Given what an invasive nature of the P fare species, I'd guess there's quite a lot of people 'trapped' in those by their corporate travel agents.

On my next LX179 (SIN) I am currently booked in business (J!) so I hoped that my upgrade would clear faster. Flight is in about 20 days and I am on the WL as there is only one seat left for sale F1. I understand they try to sell it but on the other hand a J fare is also not really cheap so I would appreciate if it clears 😁.

Absolutely Im in C or D (never in P or Z except intra-eu) so that's where I use my free Globals rather than 2 Evouchers The Evouchers I keep for upgrades on LX to F since they are usually confirmed instantly by the LX Senator line when F>=4

Unfortunately, plans at LH for upgrades from P/Z do not seem to be very concrete yet. :(

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/28941932-post1711.html

UPDATE: Meanwhile the upgrade has cleared :)
It was F1J5C0 when it cleared. I guess some pax cancelled and then the upgrade confirmed. Now F1J8C0. Assume the bc J helped a bit ;)?

Any update on this? will it also apply to UA GPU's?

I thought there were more threads to report upgrade success. This is the best fit I could find.

DXB-ZRH two P class companion fare seats with LX to First. It took a phone call to LX SEN line, and one month on the waitlist. It is a bit of overkill for 2 e vouchers each, but I don’t know when else I will use them, and kids traveling in C will hopefully benefit from the airport experience.

One of the best use of your vouchers you can make! Calculating a monetary value out of it will make you smile more. Even more when I will tell you that I used 2 vouchers for à J upg on MUC-TBS 😭
Well they were not mine but still, it made me cry...😁

Very good use of EVouchers & much better than letting them expire, not so easy to use them with less F flights & so many vouchers out there.