bocastephen

Booked FLL-EWR-HKG/PVG-NRT-SFO-SEA...right after ticketing, went to the upgrade trip option to use my GPUs and was offered FLL-EWR-HKG for $587 (and the return for $2,200 but I ignored that).

Confused, I rubbed my eyes and cleared my head and looked again...and there it was. I was initially not going to do it because I don't want to add more cost to the trip, but after figuring I'm getting an extra 9,000 PQM out of the deal with the bonus plus 50% RDM, it made sense given it would cost more than $587 to buy enough transcons to equal that 9,000.

Booked me into P class on the outbound, and I checked my credit card to make sure the temp authorization was really $587 and not $5,870 or some other rude surprise....and there it is...my first international buy-up to BF.

Oddly, there is no P fare published on this route one-way...so not sure how the buy-up was computed.

airline101

Long time viewer here but {first time poster}. I was wondering if anyone has seen an offer to Buy up to BF on an award ticket?

1kBill

SFO-HND 2/25
C->F offered at ~ $1,200, declined.
F went out with 6 non-revs. (Which I am totally OK with, as that is a legitimate employee perk, IMHO.)

Several empty seats in C also.

popoemt

I asked about this on a BF award ticket and hoping for a buy-up to GF. It was relayed to me if there is space, you can be offered a buy up (in my case I was told it would be about 1kUSD).

flyerbjorn

It seems to me like (deep) discount fares are only available as a round trip. Your fare may have been calculated as half of a r/t P fare.

And as this thread testifies, there is little logic to the calculations of upfare pricing.

diburning

Yes. In my experience, they tend to charge more for award tickets. For example, Economy Plus might be $50 on a paid ticket, but $90 on an award ticket. The buy-up to the higher cabin at OLCI could be $499 for a paid ticket, and an award ticket on the same flight could cost $999

RJNYC

EWR MCO weekend r/t three weeks from now ....

V Fare to First Class offered at $1,187
K Fare to First Class offered at $750

Is this a joke? Dummy booking shows (F/A) for purchase at $830 r/t.

puls

Just did something very similar. Booked a SFO-ORD roundtrip for April for $265, K fare, outbound leg in seat 53A on a 747. E+ was offered starting at $154.

Jaw dropped when I saw a $199 upsell on checkout. Pressed the button and bam, I'm in 1A with an A fare or something similar.

What is revenue management smoking? And can I have some?

(If it's interesting, I was a UA Platinum in a former life but I booked this under my SQ number, which is *S but nothing more.)

airline101

Well I called the help desk since I saw no offer online but I was told that I'm not able to do that on an award ticket. maybe isn't because I don't have status or something . I wont have status for a few more years since I'm not able to travel as much as I would like.

findark

Upsells that process as "upgrades" rather than add/collect are not really based on an actual published premium fare. They will book into whatever is available.

Pretty normal. This would make sense based on the fare table if you weren't on the 744 and if you expect them to figure out how to make the upsell engine work differently for the 744 flight, well...

You can't directly use cash to upgrade an award ticket, so an agent will probably not be able to help. Status or no, you are likely (but not guaranteed) to see some sort of offer at OLCI.

BigJC

Be vigilant about checking your CC account until the charge actually posts. The one and only time I bit on a buy up at purchase, the CC authorization was the same as the offer so I figured no problem. I checked a few days later and got the rude surprise - the actual amount charged was a few hundred dollars more than the authorization.

bocastephen

Not exactly correct in my case....the ticket was reissued and went from nonrefundable to refundable (at least the outbound segments), so it's definitely a P class fare not an upgrade fee. I expect to get the miles bonuses associated with P flying in P class.

I did a screen shot of the authorization....idiotically I did not screenshot the offer...but if a different charge hits, there will a DOT complaint, refund of my upgrade and I'll just use a GPU.

findark

Refundable? That's bizarre. I don't think there are refundable P fares on that route. Generally if an upsell like that gets a revenue booking code, it will earn the class of service bonus PQM (but no PQD for the upsell amount).

WineCountryUA

If any portion of the ticket is non-refundable the entire ticket is nonrefundable (the most restrictive fare rule applies to the entire ticket). You can not have a ticket with mixed refundablity.

bocastephen

Something is strange....it definitely said refundable on the screen, but when I bring up the receipt now, I can only see the original issue classes, not including the changes, but the reservation itself shows the new booking classes.