Plusgrade Pricing — Gone up?
 

I fly SYD-MEL and return a few times a year on Elevate Fares (Q, V) and normally bid for the upgrade. From memory it usually costs from $90-110 for the minimum bid.

I’m travelling this week and it seems the minimum has gone up to $150.

$150 is pretty steep for a flight of this length ... $110 was about the most I was previously willing to pay but somehow VA got me in a weak moment (maybe 3 trips in a week had something to do with it!) and I bid the $150 anyway.

I bid the min on both the outbound and return and handily got both upgrades ... the outbound was an empty A330 flight and the return was J2 when I bid but both upgrades were priced the same and both cleared.

Is $150 the new normal for these routes or is this due to some other factor?

I noticed OOL-MEL minimum was $210. Definitely seemed higher than I'd seen before.