Upgrading at the airport

Does anyone have any experience with having a non upgradable ticket on Virgin and arriving at the airport and them letting you upgrade on miles because the seats are available?

Does that ever happen?

It can happen - such as for example when a flight is overbooked and people volunteering to upgrade with miles can be allowed even on restricted tickets. Even in other circumstance too, always worth asking but expect the answer to be 'no' and if you are given a 'yes' then it will be a surprise.

PS, it's generally not a good idea to create a user name with your email address (easy to get spammed for example).

If you ask to upgrade at the airport and you are on a non-upgradeable ticket class: N, O, X etc. they will often tell you that you need to pay to upgrade to an L class (or Y) before you can do the miles upgrade. They will give you a price there and then you can decide if it is worth it.

You can see the classes in the Toolbox > Fare codes link above.

I tried to do this once at LHR and was told that I would need to pay up to a full fare ticket as I had no advance purchase as it was day of departure !

As Slinky said above, it does happen but only when VS want it too.
I have been lucky enough to be allowed to do this twice . Once when the company was being a bit cheap night flight back from Newark and the second time was on a family vacation returning from SFO, that aircraft must have been oversold twice. People everywhere!!!

If I am in your situation I always ask and expect a "No" you need to upgrade your ticket first. You could always check the loadings of your flight first, see how the land is lying.

Sometimes the reasons for it not happening seem not entirely thought through. The occasion my wife and I got an op-up at the gate having been told we could not upgrade with miles springs to mind...!

As the others have already said, never hurts to ask.

If there is availability in the class above your booking they usually ask you to pay the difference to the nearest upgradable fare class, (for eg. If you are travelling PE in K they normally calculate the change to S and then allow you to upgrade into G paying this difference and with however many miles)

From experience the check-in crew have usually been really helpful and almost always have made that phone call to ask if anything can be done if their computers initially 'say no'.

If you are looking to just upgrade with miles and pay nothing more then it is down to pure luck and how full the plane is. End of the day the mileage that you hold is a liability to the airline, so it would be better for them to get that instead of having to op-up people. ii)

My advice is big smiles, a bit of banter and see what happens. Hope it pays off y)

At Heathrow once I asked about a miles upgrade when a member of staff came up to help me. She looked on her terminal and said yes go to the payments desk. I did and was told that as it was a ticket booked through the company travel agent it was called an "IT" fare I couldn't use miles to upgrade it - only money. When I explained that I was just told I could, I was told well Ok on this occasion I can do it for you....

So there is a certain amount of leeway the check-in desks have.

Exactly as Slinky said. On a flight from SFO once, I didn't bother to explore mileage upgrades as I knew I was on a restrictive ticket, but I was delighted when I checked in to be asked "would you like to use your miles for an upgrade to UC sir?
"....a big smile and a yes was returned.

after reading this thread a factor to getting the upgrade seems to be who you talk to

It's a lack of consistency among VS staff, it certainly does make a difference who you speak with.