Mister P.

Hi,
I am relatively new to TK's Miles&Smiles program so please bear with me. I have been reading through the numerous threads in this Forum, as well as TK's Miles&Smiles Awards website but haven't been able to make much sense of the following,

• I have been looking at different itineraries across regions in the Upgrade table > Miles required for upgrade on Turkish Airlines flights and have noticed that the miles required for an upgrade from economy to business are the same that a Business Limited award seat would cost. (This is, assuming that the upgrade table refers to one-way flights). Why would anyone then bother buying an economy seat -and looking to upgrade later to business, when you can directly get an award Business Limited ticket directly, provided there are seats available? Are there any instances where it makes more sense to upgrade a ticket rather than just search for a Business Limited seat? Specially since J business fare seats seem to be quite limited in themselves. Which in turn leads to my next question,
• According to the M&S Upgrade rules, In order to upgrade to the next flight class, you must hold a valid, paid Economy Class or Business Class ticket, which earns Miles and is for a confirmed reservation. In order to take advantage of this service on eligible scheduled flights, you must have a confirmed reservation and issued ticket in the fare classes given below, and a confirmed reservation for the class to which you are upgrading.

I have been trying to make sense of the last sentence for some time but to little avail. I do understand that in order to request an award from economy to business you need to have a confirmed and ticketed booking. But how do you get around having a "confirmed reservation" for the class you want to upgrade, i.e. business? Do you have to contact M&S beforehand to make sure there are J seats available / ask them to put the upgrade on hold?

Speaking of which, what it the actual procedure for requesting an upgrade? I have seen that there is a PDF form for Award and Upgrade requests you are supposed to take to a TK sales office, so I guess in that case it would make sense to have some kind of upgrade confirmation before you actually make the trip to a sales office.

Any assistance with these questions would be much appreciated. Thanks

gr8pirate

Mister P.

Thanks for your message. Just to clarify, in order to request an upgrade, seats in J Fare need to be available, no? It seems J is also quite hard to find, at least on some routes.

ttapps

J can be tricky to find, but I've actually had really good experiences with getting upgrades after being put on the upgrade waiting list. Live in South Africa, but family in the US, and almost every flight I've taken the last 2 years I've managed to get upgraded either at booking or a few days later, using E+ vouchers or miles.

Booked an economy seat 2 days ago CPT-IST-SFO. No space in J. Received email today of confirmed upgrade.

craigthemif

You can put TK flights on hold (on tk.com) without actually paying anything, then call TK to ask about upgrading.

J definitely has more availability than I awards, which is another reason why upgrading can make more sense than a pure award.

Mister P.

Ok, thanks for the clarification! Quick question, what is the process to request seat upgrade? Have searched in the Forum and TK's website but the only information I have found is the Award and Upgrade requests form you are supposed to take to a TK sales office.

Is it possible to email the Upgrade request form to M&S customer service? Thanks

airoli

Another reason can be that an employer will pay for your Economy ticket but you'd rather sit in Business so you then spend your own miles to upgrade your ticket (while continuing to earn new miles based on the Economy fare).

flyerby

Mister P.

Ok, great! So I should first check for J fare available seats and then call / email agent and ask them to confirm upgrade space, does this sound right?
Thanks again!

Nekamah7

If a econ ticket has both UA and TK on it, can just the TK leg be upgraded?

ttapps

Assuming you booked the flights with TK, then the answer is yes. I've recently upgraded part of a flight BOG>GRU>IST. BOG>GRU is with Avianca and remains in Economy, whereas GRU>IST is TK and was upgraded.

I doubt you'd be able to upgrade if the overall flight was booked with UA.