I had a paid economy reservation for 3 people for LHR-VCE for next August. This was an add on to an F award reservation from JFK-LHR since there were no award seats LHR-VCE. When I booked, economy was £200 and Club Europe was £700 so I booked economy. When checking the reservation yesterday, there was an upgrade offer of £69 each. I jumped at it. Do these offers happen frequently?
Yes, pretty frequently. For shorthaul, there needs to be I class availability, but they are not always offered.
There was no CE award availabilty. Would there have been upgrade availability w/ miles if there was no award availability? manage my reservation told me I had to call in to try to upgrade with miles but the wait was 20+ minutes so I did the cash. With the new structure, how many miles would it have taken to upgrade if it was available. All in all I am happy. My EWR flight was cancelled 7 months out and they opened up space from JFK for me on a day they rarely offer F awards. So instead of lousy EWR I get the CCR. A lot better since I paid $800+ x 3 for the award.
There often is. The online offers usually require I class availability, which can exist even if there is no U class (award) availability. But as The Saint says, I class availability is not a sufficient condition; sometimes the cheap upgrade offer fares exist and sometimes they don't. On other routes, I have seen these cheap cash upgrades book into U class. In those cases, I suspect that there would have been award availability. But it's always wise to check the award availability separately. When I didn't know that they sometimes book into U, I've ended up paying cash when I might have been able to use miles instead. If you could upgrade from economy to business with miles, I think that it would have been 7,500 miles per person plus the additional taxes, fees and charges - mainly extra fuel surcharge and extra UK Air Passenger Duty. (On the cheap offer that you have taken up, those items are already included in the fixed price you pay - one of the reasons why it can be such a good deal.) You could not avoid the APD on the LHR-VCE ticket because it's a separate ticket; the exemption for connections only exists for single (or conjunction) tickets. However, you can only upgrade from economy with miles if your original cash booking was made in Y, B or H booking classes. These are the three most expensive booking classes. I suspect that if you paid only £200 per person for the economy ticket, this would not have been booked into an upgradeable booking class. A quick and dirty search on a random future date suggests that a ~£216 one-way economy ticket bought today would be booked into M class, and the cheapest upgradeable ticket for that date would be ~£318. So you've done well to pick up this upgrade at the special offer price.
If you already have lounge access, which you do (and CCR access if you're on BA), I really don't see the value in paying 70 euro for an upgrade to CE for such a short flight. The difference in service between CE and ET is miniscule in my eyes and I've been on both many times. The only advantage that I see is that you get London Pride in CE
I do not have the guts to be up front with out them. It will be their 1st international flight so I am going all out for them.
I was offered with same upgrade recently as well, oddly with two different fares: 69 € on the iPhone or on the website and 59€ in an "exclusive" personalized email. To understand fully the value of such offers, do you earn Avios and point of Club Europe after the upgrade ?
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