upgrading a child ticket

I have booked a trip to JFK for next year, 2 adults and a child. I am looking to upgrade to PE with miles. I booked the fare on VA website with a hotel as well. I spoke to VA to check my fare was up-gradable and they confirmed it was and that before the tickets were issued I needed to get my child's ticket issued as an adult ticket to process the upgrade. I had not experienced that before but didn't think any more about it. I now have the miles for an upgrade so I have just requested the tickets only to be told that for the child's ticket to be ticketed as an adult I need to pay additional taxes £78 and that is before I even upgrade. Has anyone come across this before? In all my calls to VA no additional charge was ever discussed and I was lead to believe that requesting my child's ticket as an adult was just a formality for an internal computer system requirement. Any advice welcome.

£78 is the APD rate for economy so I surmise that is the issue here.

A child in economy is exempt from APD.

One in PE or Upper isn't.

So as part of the upgrade process they would need to charge the first set of APD and then remainder (the other £78 as APD in premium is double the economy rate*) for all 3 of you as part of the upgrade process. The term used 'issued as an adult ticket' is a little inartful but not inaccurate.


* The APD regulations are actually written the other way around so the standard rate is charged in premium cabins and a reduced rate in economy but in day to day terms it make not one iota of a difference

So if I only want to upgrade the return flight of my journey presumably there would be no additional ADP?

Can they just issue the return portion of the flight as an adult ticket to allow the upgrade? Or can they upgrade a child ticket without it being an adult one?

I am cross with VA as I specifically asked all the questions in advance (I like to be prepared) and they did not at any point mention an additional fee to get the child ticket issued as an adult. Grrrr

That would be correct. APD only applies to flights leaving to the UK

There is no such thing as an adult or child ticket. There are tickets. As I said above I think the agent you spoke to was a little inartful in their language. There should be no problem upgrading the ticket for the return leg.

As I said above the £78 is for the initial part of APD the child had to pay for being in a premium cabin not to make it an 'adult' ticket. I think the agent was trying to be open about pricing the upgrade but in the end just confused you. What they should have perhaps done is completed calculation and then said 'that will be £XXX in total'

They have definitely confused me
Thanks for you help