Both. I was upgraded to Plus from the SAS website upfront, and to Business at check-in. I understand there might have been last minute changes creating this situation, but it just seems to fit the pattern that Optiontown upgrades in my experience seems to have low priority.

You might have screwed up your own plan.

If you did the following:
1) Apply for Plus + Business Upgrade via OptionTown for flight A
2) Apply for Plus Upgrade through Confirmed Point upgrades

2) will be usually cleared pretty much in advance of the departure date and they will exchange the ticket. It might be that OT will not be able to find the new ticket to clear their upgrade or they push it out of the queue as you were messing around with the reservation, e.g. they can't sell you a Y upgrade anymore as you're in Y already.

That your confirmed upgrade cleared was an pretty clear indication that the flight was oversold since they only clear the confirmed upgrades if the flight is overbooked or has award seats available in the new cabin class. Based on that I think the OT upgrades would have cleared.

So far my experience:
- If the flight is oversold, OT usually clears - given there are seats in the new cabin and there are not too many other OT bids and they have to draw from the pool
- If the flight is quite full but not oversold, the chances are slim but it is possible - -t seems that in this case SAS hands out only a couple of seats for OT upgrade. Had the situation once that a colleague was upgraded with OT and my upgrade was denied - so I joined him in C using points at the gate. Might be also that OT limits upgrades themselves for whatever reason.
- If has a pretty low load factor OT will for sure not clear - there are some exceptions like first timers
- OT Upgrades take priority over Opups - as long as the booking situation is clear when desk check-in opens. If suddenly a IRROP pushes 50 more pax on the plan the gate agents will process the opups regardless of OT as they have closed down by that time already
- Upfront confirmed upgrades through EB take priority over OT Upgrades

These are my guestimates based on experience and talks I had with gate agents and SAS staff. Not sure how reliable those are.

It seems as though they have changed the very steep prices to more fair prices for future flights. A flight in next week CPH-IAD is now 232 EUR for Plus and 495 EUR for Business. The same prices are also available for CPH-EWR in Oct. and Nov. - so seems like SAS realized that the prices were way too expensive! However the prices are still about 30% more expensive than what I've previously experienced. However they're not 400 EUR for Plus and 850 EUR for Business anymore as they've been the past month or so!

Just saw CPH-PVG for 155€ to Plus and 280€ to Business.

This is pretty much in line with my previous bookings to Asia. I guess it really depends on the bookings on the flight, how long in advance you try to upgrade, how much you payed for the fare etc...

Just flew Oslo-Newark, Newark-Copenhagen, and this was the first time I signed up for Optiontown.
Upgraded to Sas Plus through Optiontown both ways, and on the way over I used points to upgrade from Sas Plus to Business.
On the return trip I got a free upgrade to Business since the flight was overbooked. My lucky day.

Hi all -- first time posting in this forum. I recently purchased tickets for our first flight on SAS -- IAD - CPH in August. Our flight out I bought business class since it is overnight and want to maximize sleep, but the flight back I went with SASPlus ( I'm 6'4, so need the extra legroom at a minimum). The flight back is of course mid-afternoon. I just saw that optiontown upgrades for the flight home from plus to business class are currently going for about $225(would be $450 total for me and my wife), which to be honest for me is right on the border, so I thought I'd seek the wisdom of this group. So, what do you think, is it worth it for the 8+ hour afternoon flight, or SAS Plus is comfy enough if you aren't trying to sleep? I realize of course that this may all be moot as it's entirely possible we wouldn't get upgraded anyway through optiontown.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts! Looking forward to trying out the SAS product for the first time.

I guess it depends on what's important to you. For me, I'm not tall enough to be bothered too much by the legroom, but the space to work and have my laptop open and some papers out is important to me. So I'm more likely to go for business class on the CPH-IAD day flight, since that's a solid 8 hours of working time. On the overnight IAD-CPH flight, SAS Plus provides enough space and I don't sleep that well anyway due to the flight's timing (5pm-midnight on my body clock).

Now if SK had flat-bed seats in business, it may be a different story.

Hi mdtraveller1981!

Welcome to flyertalk!

I agree with jfidler, it depends, but then again I'm height challenged. I sit a lot better in the plus seats, and am completely satisfied with them. The small foot rest and wider seat seems to fit just right. I have seen others your size in plus, and while they do not seam cramped, they could use more legs space. I would think that it would be adequate for you, but you'd be more comfortable in business. Food is better, and they have an :pespresso:p machine on the 343!

Thank you jfidler and gakke for the feedback. Seems like Plus should be okay, but espresso machine certainly sounds nice -- I'll make sure to check it out on the flight out (maybe can have some before landing as an early breakfast pick-me-up to counteract the jetlag :)). Agree re: working space jfidler, although this is a vacation so hopefully the laptop can stay in the bag (way too far out to be able to tell at this point). I'll probably just live with plus (but I'll also probably change my mind 5 times between now and the trip!). Always appreciate the friendly responses.

re: my trying to get OT for a ticket that was bought half cash/half points.

In regard a related matter, a question about how many points I was entitled to since we ended up paying cash for an upgrade on way home; this was part of the email. This excerpt is relevant to the OT thread:

As I see from the booking the Option Town upgrade was rejected:

SK UTO SK936/24MAR REJECT DUE TO REGULAR TRIPS FOR POINT
SK UTO SK935/09APR REJECT DUE TO REGULAR TRIP FOR POINTS

SO, no OT for anything but 100% cash paid tickets. FYI purposes.

Thanks for useful info. I actually contacted OT customer support beforehand and asked about this, since I registered for OT for this flight before the SAS web upgrade request. They claimed that getting a confirmed point upgrade to Plus would not have any impact on my OT Business upgrade request. But then.. their customer support rep might have been wrong about this..

@MDTraveller1981:

I had your exact routing last year with the girlfriend. You will be quite sad to have the flight home from holiday on Plus, as service is nothing what you have been seeing in the US and then the lack of service on SAS will make a sad ending to your holiday.

Just my personal thoughts

I do agree SAS PLUS on long-haul is not great compared to business or first class travel but I think SAS PLUS is a decent flying experience and not worse than any US domestic first or Y+ on the other carriers over the pond.

The only thing I usually complain about is the pricing which is compared to the the competition pretty high.

Yes, TK´s Y+ 43" seat pitch with -600€ to same price is tempting. SK timetable is better though and PLUS is decent Y+.

Hello folks,

I have a couple of questions:

1. When I attempt to go to www.optiontown.com, I keep getting a 503 Service Unavailable Error. Anyone else getting the same error? - Answering my own question, looks like its working now. Must've been some kind of temporary maintenance or glitch that was causing the error to show up.

2. If we do get the upgrade that was requested, then do we accrue miles at a higher rate, for example, for business/first class upgrades?

Thank you!