I have a similar question as I'm booked in Plus for LAX-CPH on May 4. The minimum bid to upgrade from Plus to Business has fluctuated between $250 and $410; my current bid is based on the lower bid amount. Checking EF, about half the business cabin is shown occupied while the other half is indicated as requiring a fee for seat assignment. Checking on SAS itself, only 5 seats are available for purchase in Business. Just trying to decide if I should hold my current bid or go by the higher minimum bid.

I will say don't take what I am about to say as gospel. It's completely anecdotal. And with this group, someone is always eager to try and prove the exception. So take what I say as my experience only.

Right up until about November/December, SAS used to only mark seats as "occupied", "available", or "blocked". With that old approach, one of the things you could easiöy see was when SAS was blocking off seats based on their estimation of what seats they could sell. It also allowed one to quite easily decide whether to keep their below minimum bid or to raise it.

Their new approach is to treat every seat as "Premium/Paid", which has reduced the visibility of actual seat availability in the sense that you no longer know what they are blocking off and what they are leaving for potential bidding. I suspect you could potentially get more insight with a subscription to EF, but I don't want to pay for it just for SAS flights. I'll test my theory after SK transition to Sky Team and I need to find premium class availability for voucher use.

With the visibility gone, I would default back to the concept of bid whatever you think the seat is worth. And if travelling in J is critical to you, consider just paying for it outright and avoiding the game of chance.

Missing option to upgrade?
 

I have 2 bookings, both Nordic domestic (to and from Svalbard to Norway), one Go Smart booked directly, one Go Bonus booked via Aeroplan. Neither has the option to place bids... Am I doing something wrong? Or upgrades are not available for the types of tickets I booked...

I am having this same problem. Can no longer see my upgrade bid in the app.

However, all was visible from the SAS website. Check there to see if it works for you.

I didn't have the app to begin with and was trying on the website. I just tried the app and I still don't see the bidding for upgrade option...

Ah okay. Then I only recommend you to use the chat function or call them. They may be able to help ypu manually place a bid.

Upgrade Experiece CPH-SFO
 

Submitted an upgrade request for Go to Business a few months ago for CPH to SFO. Was 7k SEK. Decided to place a bid.

There is going to be a couple of huge conferences next week so I knew the bid price would rise. It inevitablly jumped to 9800 sek. I kept my original bid amount.

Checked this morning to see if I won after the bidding window closed (six hours before). The upgrade system seemed screwed up so no notification if I won or lose. Just returned a weird response that there was negative one year and one month left to bid. I figured that was SAS' way of telling me I lost.

Three hours before my flight got notified that I won my bid. I figured they had to do manual processing.

Quite happy with this result. I think I might have gotten a bit lucky.

CPH->SFO
Upgrade: plus to business
Bid: minimum bid, 29000 miles, bid 29010 (+gold)
Successful: yes, notified 24 hrs before departure
Upgrade cost at airport: 35000 miles

SFO --> CPH

Go to Business
Put in a bid for Go to Business
Business went from seven seats to sold out day before departure. Kind of expected this. The big conference ended on Thursday so I suspect people booked on Sunday biz class moved their flights in a day early to get home during the weekend.

Go to Plus
Placed alternate bid for Plus right away. Bid 3300 SEK (minimum bid was 3000 SEK).

There were only five seats left when the bidding closed. Once again, the six hour window came and went without any notofication. I got a messgae whiöst sitting in the lounge three hours before departure that my bid won. So seems that the allocation was once again done manually.

This will be my first time in a few years travelling long haul in Plus. Luckily, thanks to people sharing their experiences on this forum, I know what to expect 🙃😶🙂

Did both of the above happen with >24h until departure? I can't help but wonder whether some of the reduction inventory was due to Plusgrade upgrades that just had been, or were about to be, processed. Absent a generous SDC policy, seven seats seems like a lot of last-minute movement, but everything certainly is possible (including things like irrops eating up seats last minute). Also, out of curiosity, what was the minimum bid for Eco to Biz when you placed your original bid?
Thanks for sharing, and I hope you survived the flight :)

More like 36 hours, but it was quite sudden...

SAS doesn't use Plusgrade anymore so that wasn't it. In my case, I really do think it was due to the RSA Conference. It ended Thursday. I think like me, people wanted to stay an extra day or two. I can also believe that there were some people who probably planned to fly out on Sunday, but ran out of things to do in SFO and if their ticket allowed, just choose to fly back on Saturday instead of Sunday in order to get home before the weekend ended.


When I first bid it was 4500 SEK, then it increased to 7000 SEK.

My SAS Plus flight in 2024 reminded my why I decided back in 2018/2019 never to fly Plus unless the only alternative was SAS Go 🫠

Just wanted to give my recent bid experiences:

May 4
LAX-CPH
Plus -> Business
Minimum bid was $410 USD, I eventually bid $550. At T-minus 24hrs, no notification of whether bid was successful or not, so I proceeded to check-in online. About 6 hours before departure, was notified that my bid was successful. The business cabin ended up going out full. Food was meh but I fully appreciated the lie-flat which I think helped immensely this time in not feeling absolutely exhausted once I arrived in Europe.

May 19
CPH-LAX
Plus -> Business
Minimum bid was again $410 USD, but given this was a day flight I didn't really want to overbid, so I just bid the minimum and predictably, the bid was rejected at 24-hours prior to departure. Plus ended up going out full as did Business - and only a few seats open in Go.

CPH-IAD
Minimum bid dropped to $240 and I bid $301. A few weeks ago minimum jumped to $410. Did not change bid. Day before departure SK website said 8 business seats available for sale. At 24 hours out reservation showed my bid was not accepted. Fine, was in Plus going westbound. At 6 hours out notified bid was accepted.

Lots of younger women in Business. Turns out flight had LOTS of folks on the flight returning to the US from STO Taylor Swift concert.

Had to get a hotel room in Stockholm on Friday night for a reason other than the Taylor Swift concert. The best price Nordic Choice Hotels had anywhere in the city was 3,400SEK!

We had success on our flight CPH - NYC, 8+ seats available on Expert Flyer 24h before departure. Minimum bid + a few bucks just to beat the absolute minimum. It cleared about 6h before departure.

Paid a little less than 250 euro, and it was totally worth it. PE to C.

Enjoyed the good and drink service.