Airport upgrades - how many miles?

Good evening,

I've seen a few of you mention that you have occasionally been successful in upgrading at check in on the day of travel using miles or miles+money combination.

Are there any set amounts of miles for upgrades at check-in? I assume it would be more miles from a K to J rather than a W to J?

Do the standard rules of being in a specific fare class still apply?

It would be interesting to hear your experiences of where you have been successful or advised of an amount of miles which you deemed too high. I'd like to ensure an adequate 'bank' of miles just encase!

Thanks,

Luke

[Nottingham Nick]

The official answer is that all rules still apply at the airport as per the website.
ergo -

Economy to Premium Economy - 20,000 miles
Premium Economy to Upper - 40,000 miles
Economy to Upper Class - 60,000 miles

In reality I have heard of fare qualification being waived and passenger being allowed to spend miles from a non-qualifying fare, but that was some time ago, and I am not sure how common it is.

Nick

The one and only time I have done this was to upgrade a 'K' from PE to UC going to ORD in 2008.

It was the standard PE-UC miles 'cost' - so 40K (return) miles plus ~£550 to get me in the right bucket.

AFAIK the miles 'cost' is the set miles so 10k (per leg) from Y to PE, 20k from PE to UC and 30k from Y to UC

[honey lamb]

On two occasions I have upgraded at the airport with miles from a K - once at check-in and once in the Clubhouse. On each occasion the flights were seriously oversold and they were looking for volunteers and I was not asked to pay the difference to the upgradeable bucket. It cost me 20K miles which was the standard PE to UC cost

The Upgradable Tickets are:
Y B and L in Economy (10k miles to Premium and 30k miles to Upper)
W S and U in Premium Economy (20k miles to Upper)

But like others have said you can pay to get other classes of tickets changed to these to use miles to upgrade, but these change fees vary on a day to day basis.
And in my experience, its usually cheaper to pay the airport rate for the upgrade than may for the change in class and using the miles, but there may be somedays when thats not true.