Can I sneakily upgrade a friend's flight?
 

My girlfriend is visiting her mother in Zurich, and will be booking a round-trip ticket to fly home from Zurich to San Francisco. (It's complicated ... she uses the "return" trip to fly back out to Zurich in the next year, and visit her mother again, and repeats the process. So she typically specifies an arbitrary "return" flight date that is about a year out, maybe Christmas or summer, and commonly ends up changing it and paying the change fee once plans solidify though sometimes keeps it as is).

Anyway, if I know her confirmation number and her full name etc, is it possible for me to sneak and upgrade her to a business class flight? Would I need to upgrade both legs of the ticket? If I do this, does the 'change' fee become more expensive?

Thanks for your help!!

goffredo Welcome to FT

Upgrade with what?
Your money or your frequent flyer miles?
A lot depends on the ticket t&c's. It may or may not be upgradeable.
If you go her "manage booking" [name - reservation] on the web site does it show an upgrade option/button?
Any upgrade/ticket change would likely have a email sent to the email in the reservation.

Cash! She hasn't booked it yet so I have no idea the fare class etc. My plan is to give them a call when she books it and sends me her itinerary and booking number, and see how far I can get.

Will be hard to surprise her, as they will most likely bill the upgrade the same way as the original ticket and send out a confirmation to the e-mail address used when booking. Easiest way may be to offer to take care of the booking and then just book business class right away.

There is no way they will discuss another passengers ticket with you :)
Any changes will be notified to the original pax.

That is not correct :)
i have upgraded multiple friends as a surprise before.
as long as you know the name and the booking code, you’re good.

also, they will always ask for a new credit card so a previous posters concern this will be billed in the same way is not warranted.

to avoid her getting an email about it, you can change the email on the booking to yours, run the upgrade and then change it back.

the only way they would still get notified of that then would be if they see it in case if looking into the booking or when emailed about a schedule change etc.

Deleted

Interesting to read that you have actually done it.

I always use the same credit card for booking and upgrades so I assumed that it has to be that way. My bad.

Concerning the e-mail address: I am not sure it is OK to change the e-mail address in a booking without the booked pax knowing about it, although it is certainly possible with name and booking reference to access the booking and change all kinds of things. Would feel somewhat uncomfortable doing that.

If the email address is changed, isn't a notification of the change sent to the previous email address? That's what should always happen.

This doesn’t happen with LX/LH

I am not sure they do it, as I have never tried, but I think they should!

That’s not good, as name and booking reference are often transmitted in non-secure ways.

Done it countless of times on LH/LX, never once have I or the other party involved received an email.

Amazing & somewhat disturbing if you can take over another pax booking if you find out some details. :eek:

Exactly, you can just manage another pax booking with minimal details but if you want to receive compensation for EU261 they want the utmost security. :rolleyes: