upgrade with miles
 

Whats my best option to upgrade a economy ticket to premium or business class? can i do it with miles ? can i go on a wait list if its not available?

Thanks

First of all, you do realise that you pay the same number of TK miles for an upgrade as you do for an award ticket...

The difference is availability buckets and co-payments.

TK doesn't offer premium economy any longer and I don't know anything about waitlisting, but:

- you can upgrade using miles ahead of time if "J" booking class is available (the actual J fare bucket, not J=business class)

- you can upgrade using miles at check-in if any business class seats are available

- TK sometimes sell upgrades at check in. I remember LAX-IST being somewhere around 900 USD

You should inquire at check-in if upgrade with miles is possible. If seats in business are available, you will often be able to upgrade for cash or miles.

As already pointed out the miles required for an upgrade is the same as for the purchase of an award ticket, e.g. 45,000 miles for Asia to Europe o/w(including upgrade of the IST-Europe leg).

If you upgrade from economy to business with miles all you need is an available seat, unlike a business redemption which, at the lower rate, is bucket dependent. Given that you would normally have to pay taxes and fees anyway, this can work out well if the underlying economy fare was well priced.

For upgrades with TK miles, do you still have fees/taxes to pay or is it just the miles? And, are there any economy fare classes from which it is not possible to upgrade?

No extra fees on upgrades of existing Y bookings. All economy fare classes are eligible for upgrade.

If you upgrade at check-in, all they need is an unsold business class seat.

Any TK revenue fare is upgradable, even though information on the website didn't always reflect this...

If you upgrade on flights from the UK, you should have to pay the APD supplement for premium class travel. AFAIK the always collect this extra tax, but YMMV :D.

That'll be an additional £13 (£26-£13) if you're flying to a Turkish destination, but £124 (£150-£26) if you're off somewhere more exotic (band B) and don't have a 24H+ break in Istanbul.

Wow, I didn't know about that UK fee!
I'm suddenly happy there was no J class availability to upgrade from London to IST next week...

As well as award space, in my experience.

OK, but it'd not really a fee. It's a duty, a tax that goes directly to the exchequer. It rakes in a significant amount each year to help fund our health service etc etc

For the 95% of the world who doesn't know what an "exchequer" is... George Harrison called him the taxman. :D

Although I was under the impression that TK didn't charge anything extra at all when upgrading using miles. One of the "perks" of a charging the same miles for upgrading as a straightforward J reward.

I have a ticket in T and U classes. Can I upgrade to business class for miles?

The local TK office claims that no, due to the U class.

You can upgrade from any class using M&S miles but only from Y if using other *A miles.

http://www.turkishairlines.com/en-in...awards/upgrade

U class cannot be upgraded according to the list of eligible fare classes.

I'm guessing that U fare class on TK is somewhat special - travel industry discount or something?