Fiji Air - Bula Bid
 

So long story short - I won a trip to Tavarua in Fiji which includes flights on Fiji Air from LAX. Woohoo for me.

I am wondering though - has anyone had any experience with the Bula bid for Business Class? I'm definitely going to try it, and it's in the offseason for surf anyways (late January)

Not done the bid but I fly in paid business class on Fiji Airways but from SYD - NAN - SYD. In all my trips I have seen about 2 free business seats. I gather you can only move to Business if there are free seats. You might need a decent bid to win one of what I imagine are few available seats.

Late January is school holidays time in Australia so flights are often busy.

I suspect this is a fairly new feature so you may get the first to try advantage. :)

My flights from LAX-NAN in June the business cabin was 20/24, but my flights NAN-AKL were 9/24. I think you may have to bid high on the LAX routes since everyone is trying to be up front for the long haul segments. Maybe check the loads on Expert Flier and guess based on how many seats are left for sale before you bid?

I didn't bid when I was offered Bula Bid (SIN-NAN-SIN). I think the lowest price was about 500 SGD. For this route, they didn't fill the seats. On NAN-SIN, I was pretty exhausted, and decided to ask at the counter about same-day upgrades. 500 USD or something. I didn't bite, and wound up sitting beside a stinky guy. Ugh!

When returning from Nadi I asked at the check-in about upgrading my daughter so she could join me in Biz. There was space and I paid a bit over 1K to upgrade her from coach. It's worth asking at the desk. Good luck!

Yeah, I'm waiting on my confirmation # and flight info, probably won't receive it until December sometime. Curious to know if anyone else has tried the Bula Bid. If it's around $500 to $750, I'd be all over it.

Bid for one next week. Lowest available bid was $600.

nothing to complain about the Airline
perfect service, good food , for me one of the best airlines
i used them 5 times MEL - NAN - MEL
and once VLI - NAN
i love the Fiji Gold water

Lowest possible bid for LAX-NAN next week was $700. I took a pass on that one.

I did it about 10 years back LAX-NAN on the old 744. Got it both directions for about $300 each for two of us. Other pax were not happy that we paid $800 for our tickets and $300 for the upgrades, making our trip $1400 compared to the $4-5k they paid for biz. I've heard minimum bids on the 330 can be as high as $1000-1200 each direction.

minimum bid on flight 3 weeks ago NAN/LAX was AUD$865, so bid $900 & got it. Business class was awesome. This is a great programme.

Many people don't realise that any airlines aircraft with say 400 seats, say 50 in business & 350 in economy, will take more than 350 economy bookings as long as business is nowhere near full. Then if all 350+ showed up someone who have to be upgraded for $0, so better to get some revenue than do it free. Win-win for everyone. Only catch for airline is, if someone is prepared to pay for business class(there are 3 or 4 different business class fares) then they might buy cheap economy ticket & upgrade, but then again, upgrades can never be certain, but bula bids close off 24 hours out & may still be able to buy upgrades at higher level at check in.

Flying LAX/NAN week ago, checked afternoon of flight & the airline said 7 business class still available. Got held up & only arrived at check in at 9pm for 10.30pm departure & they said only 1 business class left & while I was thinking about it, they seemed to give it to staff (think he was a pilot).

Do you get J class QFF points and SC on this upgrade? Thanks

look on you tube
 

I don't like to post the link but it's a new video on YouTube. Business Fiji to Tonga and hidden camera in the business class lounge from the same guy

Doubt if fiji to tonga would ever be widebody. Think it's a 737 or even s turbo prop. Very short flight.