tbaiyun

Fact: No availability to upgrade with miles while the lowest award is available for redemption with miles; agent quoted upgrade quota reached

I am not sure if this is something new for upgrades, and I would like to check if anyone here has a similar experience.

Story: I will have a trip next month from YUL to Europe in W (fare category A) on AF. I routinely check upgrade availability on AF to see if it is possible to upgrade to J but there was none or it required a good amount of miles to upgrade. Today, while I checked the APP and I found my flights (exact same itinerary) available for a new award ticket at 64k miles. Supposing it should mean there is available O-class inventory, I called PSL to inquire.

First call, the agent told me there is no availability. I insisted and asked her to check since there are two seats at the lowest award available, and she said that they were not the same thing and she wasn't able to find the upgradable place.

HUCA and picked French, again, the agent told me there is no availability. When I asked for the reason she mentioned something like "it has reached the upgrade quota" and they would only take cash upgrade or 30 hours before check-in with the airport.

I can kind of understand that it is operated by a 777-COI with only 14 biz seats. But it is the first time that I heard about a quota (or limit) for miles upgrade available on a flight. From my past experience, as I have done several times upgrades with miles pre-covid, I understand as when an O-class opens at the lowest possible miles, the same inventory can be used for an upgrade. It seems that today I learned something new.

Or is it just a system glitch that the 64k award spaces were indeed not redeemable? What do you think?

Stil

I have one question: Where is YUL-Europe 64k?
The most "expensive" I can think of is HEL and that is 59k.
The app is in my experience less then reliable when it comes to showing correct price for inventory.
Did you try to make a dummy booking, where you went all the way to the payment page?

Edit: I must have been half asleep when answering so please disregard my comments (I were thinking J) except about the dummy booking.
I'm am still a little puzzled about the destination for 64k though?

irishguy28

What's the route?

64k sounds like a weird and arbitrary amount for....a one-way award in J?

EDIT: that said, YUL-LHR starts at 70k one way in J so perhaps there are routes where 64k is an accurate "starting-from" price...

Stil

There are a lot with starting from at 60k LHR/ZRH/BSL/GVA/VIE/BUD as examples, but I haven't found any with 64k?

tbaiyun

(XDS)-YUL-CDG-VIE
As XDS-YUL on a single-class bus, the only upgradable segments will be YUL-CDG-VIE. And I know that they have changed in 2018/2019, an upgrade must apply to the whole itinerary in a single direction. So I supposed that I should use YUL-CDG-VIE in this case.

I was surprised to see 64k as well in the beginning. But checking with Flying Blue this morning, and it is indeed 64k at the lowest miles.

Should I call again?

Stil

Have you tried to make the booking in the app or browser where you see the availability?

If you can not get it to price/ticket then I would for sure call again, as FB has a lot of leverage with inventory. Just explain you can't get it to ticket.
(The other day they added a substantial amount of miles to my account because a booking that I had made wouldn't ticket and the price had gone when contacting them).

I'm writing the next because I know YUL-Europe as I'm commuting between CPH-YUL.
Historically there are much more "cheap" open premium award inventory between YUL and Europe then between Europe and YUL.
There are a good chances of there being "cheap" inventory opening up close to beparture date, so if it doesn't work now keep looking.

Make the booking from YUL.

irishguy28

Perhaps that answers your question? Because you have a bus sector you can't upgrade?

tbaiyun

I sent an email to PSL to specifically ask for YUL-CDG-VIE, the answer from the agent:
I could tell that reward availability at lowest mileage (64k) is still available this morning but it could be either a phantom availability. I totally agree that XDS has been a nightmare since they changed the upgrade scheme. And hopefully, with the new YOW direct flight can change this situation. (PS: I would doubt if we shall spend miles on the 330 for biz though, especially since most of the time I travel solo...)

Stil

I seriously misunderstood your whole question... Sorry that my answers were clear as mud for you question... 😉

Good luck finding availability!

tbaiyun

New updates: new O inventories popped up during the past weekend and finally got upgraded with miles

I had 4 phone calls with the agents as PSL email asked me to call back in several days and to check the availabilities, and I learned something new for the miles upgrade:

• Mileage upgrade to Biz requires availability in O; for platinum members, it is also possible when there is Z available;
• Unlike a redemption ticket which uses dynamic pricing, mileage upgrades use fixed rate, where for example YUL/YYZ-CDG, A->O 30k miles, A->Z 80k miles;
• It is possible to upgrade segment by segment, or all flights in the same direction, depending on the availability

So the issue that I originally had was that when I searched for YUL-CDG-VIE, the inventory shows Z/J: Z for YUL-CDG and J for CDG-VIE which is not possible to do the upgrade in the whole direction. But when it comes YUL-CDG alone, the inventory shows 2 seats in I for last week, therefore I was not able to upgrade at all. But then Z availability showed up (1 seat only) on last Saturday, and return to 4 I this Monday.

The funny thing is, even YUL-CDG remains at 4 seats available at I class on the website, I called PSL on Monday and the agent told me that they indeed had 2 seats in O for YUL-CDG only that I immediately paid 60k miles to get the upgrade done. At the same moment I checked again YUL-CDG-VIE and it showed 2 available O/J but the agent still confirmed that it is not upgradable for CDG-VIE.

In all, there is not really a quota capped for upgrade seats but rather O and Z inventories. However, the mechanism behind that is somehow mysterious, it doesn't really follow what we can find on the website and even though the website shows the lowest mile redemption is available, it is not necessarily possible to do any upgrade. Or even the website showed no availability, it is still possible to do the upgrade with somewhat a married segment...