chelseastu

Hi,
After being screwed around by BA, I decided to cacel and book my wife and child on Qatar from BKK to LHR in economy on 5th Dec.
Total cost was 48,980 baht. For the purpose of this post, I'll convert everything to pounds, £1,224 return

I've received an Email from Qatar offering an upgrade to Business on both legs (BKK>DOH, DOH>LHR) for an additional £1634 one way. Assuming I get the same Email for the return flight then the total cost would be £3268 plus the original Economy cost of £1224, total £4492...and yet.....I can book the same return flights in business on their website for 143,560 baht which equates to £3,589

Is this normal as it sounds like I am being ripped off.?
Needless to say I will NOT be taking them up on their offer

brunos

Indeed the upgrade offer is not attractive.
Note that business pax get to travel in Y on their company account. They are major user of upgrade with miles or cash.
Also note that current times are not normal. Pricing is often weird as some flights are limited to few "repatriated" nationals.

plunet

It's also the case that as a ticket holder, assuming your ticket isn't freely refundable, you are now a captive customer. They are trying to upsell you services knowing that you have limited practical options to go elsewhere unless you pay the cancellation fee on your ticket. So the pricing of any upgrade at this point is frequently more the price of buying the enhanced cabin in the first place, unless the airline has their own motive to move customers from Y to J.

And as brunos points out, it's a very unusual situation at the moment and the standard algorithms that will govern pricing which would be usually influenced by predicted yield or profit on a specific flight or route are all over the shop.

LondonElite

Indeed. Why would the upgrade have to cost less than current business inventory?

toz100

As far as I know upgrades to business do not include lounge access and mileage/luggage rules are according to the Y-booking. If the current business invdntory offers a better price then a ticket change might make more sense than accepting the 'offer'.

LondonElite

It might. My point was that the offer doesn’t need to make sense.

toz100

Of course they are free to charge any price. If they want to sell the upgrade it should be sensible however.

bratensauce

You can negotiate the price at the airport. You might get a good deal if there is availability just before the flight. Which there usually is nowadays...

chelseastu

Yes, my thoughts exactly, if they offered a deal that was reasonable, I would probably take it but not at this price.

I get these are crazy times...

chelseastu

If it was me, I'd try to upgrade at the airport but its the missus who's flying...

chelseastu

To be honest, I had no intention of booking them in business but when I saw the email I did consider upgrading them until I worked out the cost.

If I do upgrade them, I'd probably cancel the original ticket and rebook, I'd still save myself £600 or so...

chelseastu

So to add to this. I have received another Email to upgrade the flight.

First Email offer :-



The NEW email is even better




So by declining the first offer, its now got more expensive...
Some deal!!!!

ISTFlyer

It's normal that the price is fluctuating as availability could change at anytime.
Although, I don't know how the AI decides how to price those upgrades.

clubeurope

it’s not a significant price increase from the previous offer. My guess is that this has got to do with some exchange rate fluctuations

LondonElite

Revenue management is usually a bit smarter than you. They are playing a game of offering you the opportunity to upgrade against what they see/percieve as current demand for new bookings. They don't give upgrades away for a pittance just to fill up. premium cabin.