upgrade help

help!

I have just attempted my first upgrade with the call centre. as i was expecting it went wrong. they said there was loads of availability on the flight but no rewards upgrade seats.

i have read various times on here about upgrades and i have heard this before but can't remember the outcome. they suggested upgrading my economy ticket in readiness but that could go wrong to my mind if no seat become available?

sorry for the question as i know its been asked before. short of calling every day i am at a bit of a loss? i dont fly until august next year.

anyone offer some guidance?

[Neil]

I would just wait for the moment. You can check reward availability by doing a dummy miles booking on the VS website rather than calling every day and then if some come available you can call back and upgrade your ticket then.

Where are you flying to and what class of travel are you looking for?

Cancun. Upper? Thanks for the reply neil you always seem to drag me out of it. Have to work out how to do a dummy booking!

do i need to select upper lowest or upper flexible or doesnt it matter to chack availability?

the dummy booking suggests there is space going out but not coming back? any idea what sort of time before flying that might change or is it a lottery?

The chance of getting an upper class reward flight to Cancun in school summer holidays (Aug) is remote to say the least. Remember there are only 14 upper seats on the 747 aircraft that operate this route.

Sorry to sound negative, just trying to set expectations.

[Neil]

Cancun. Upper? Thanks for the reply neil you always seem to drag me out of it. Have to work out how to do a dummy booking!

do i need to select upper lowest or upper flexible or doesnt it matter to chack availability?

the dummy booking suggests there is space going out but not coming back? any idea what sort of time before flying that might change or is it a lottery?

To do a dummy miles booking, you should select the 'use miles' option instead of the -/+ 3 day option that is the default. This will then change the upper (lowest/flexible) to just upper.

As clarkyntfc has said, with only 14 UC seats on a flight, and a route that has proved very popular, during the main school holidays, I think it could be very tough to find some reward availability, but it doesn't harm to keep checking.

Neil

Don't foret that not all tickets are upgradable.
Personally I would always make sure that the ticket I am holding is upgradable (you can pay up to that fare if necessary).. You may not get the upgrade and then feel you wasted your money BUT if there is a last minute chance of upgrade then you need to be ready and able to do it straight away. That is not the time to messing about to find the fare difference etc .

Guys

Can thank you enough. Your comments make perfect sense. Thanks for your help

Wish me luck! I will be in economy I suspect.

Might be worth checking the cost of an upgradeable economy ticket, and comparing that against a 'K' class PE ticket. Sometimes there isn't much in it, and you'd at least be guaranteed to avoid economy.

[Neil]

Don't foret that not all tickets are upgradable.
Personally I would always make sure that the ticket I am holding is upgradable (you can pay up to that fare if necessary).. You may not get the upgrade and then feel you wasted your money BUT if there is a last minute chance of upgrade then you need to be ready and able to do it straight away. That is not the time to messing about to find the fare difference etc .

I couldn't disagree more - to change your fare code while on the phone doing the miles upgrade is a 1 minute job and can all be done at the same time. There is no point buying an upgradable fare if you aren't going to be able to get an upgrade seat, it's just wasting money.

Don't foret that not all tickets are upgradable.
Personally I would always make sure that the ticket I am holding is upgradable (you can pay up to that fare if necessary).. You may not get the upgrade and then feel you wasted your money BUT if there is a last minute chance of upgrade then you need to be ready and able to do it straight away. That is not the time to messing about to find the fare difference etc .

I couldn't disagree more - to change your fare code while on the phone doing the miles upgrade is a 1 minute job and can all be done at the same time. There is no point buying an upgradable fare if you aren't going to be able to get an upgrade seat, it's just wasting money.

I did this back in September for a flight out to MCO next week. They changed my fare code and upgraded my ticket all in one go.

Certainly wasn't a hassle.

Don't foret that not all tickets are upgradable.
Personally I would always make sure that the ticket I am holding is upgradable (you can pay up to that fare if necessary).. You may not get the upgrade and then feel you wasted your money BUT if there is a last minute chance of upgrade then you need to be ready and able to do it straight away. That is not the time to messing about to find the fare difference etc .

I couldn't disagree more - to change your fare code while on the phone doing the miles upgrade is a 1 minute job and can all be done at the same time. There is no point buying an upgradable fare if you aren't going to be able to get an upgrade seat, it's just wasting money.

I'm with Neil on this, don't change your economy fare code until you have found reward seat availability, otherwise you could spend money for nothing and still end up in economy!! It really is a 2 min job and the agent will happily hold the reward seat for you while they are changing your economy ticket to an 'L' class

It is true that changing your fare code isn't a big hassle but some agents are quicker than others and it is very annoying if the reward seat disappears in the meantime.

Also, bear in mind that you have no guarantee that an L (or S or B or ...) will be available when the G becomes available. One advantage of grabbing an L early is that it saves you from having to pay up to a very expensive full fare code if that is all that is available. This is a real issue if you are looking to upgrade at the airport when Gs often appear, but you are unable to move to an advance purchase bucket in your booking class.

When I recently upgraded my fare to an L and got a reward seat the agent held the G whilst they were upgrading the economy fare, there was no risk of loosing the G.

Granted their is a small chance All L's may be gone but I certainly would not pay 50% extra or more ( on my trip cheapest economy was £456 L fare £706) for my economy ticket on the off chance that a G becomes available, I'd keep looking for the G and upgrade if and when it becomes available.

This all works fine as long as you have plenty of time to do it in advance.
If you are standing at the checkin desk then there may not be time to mess about calculating fare difference etc plus the checkin agent may just say that you do not have an upgradable ticket and not try very hard (I have witnessed all this although not experienced it).

For example, after checkin sometimes a seat becomes available but the gate will not start messing with fare differences and collecting money. They can quickly deduct miles from the account (this I have experienced several times although never at LHR).

For me I like to remove all possible barriers to upgrade so the only thing I need is for someone to no-show.

The one time I have upgraded it was at LHR. I was flying to ORD on a K.

When I got to LHR I asked one of the guardian dragons abd she directed me to the ticketing desk rather than the check-in desk.

A lovely agent had it sorted out in a couple of minutes and relieved me of both money and miles. The process not helped by her terminal freezing! She also delayed going for her break so I made sure to tell her supervisor what a good job she had done and even emailed VS to praise her.

So my advice would be to go to the ticketing desk as it was less pressurised and didn't hold any other pax in the queue up.

Cancun seems to have good availability in upper right now. Not sure when daveangel is going but there is UC availability in August 2013 as follows:

VS93 LGW-CUN on 1st, 6th, 8th, 10th, 13th, 20th 22nd, 24th, 27th, 29th, 31st

VS94 CUN-LGW on 3rd, 6th, 10th, 24th, 27th

Seems pretty good. Jan and Feb 2013 the availability is minimal though!

Hi all -- first time Virgin flyer, and had a question about upgrading. Please forgive me if this is a newbie question.

Flying for work between NYC-BOM in PE. It's my understanding from reading this forum that the only PE seats that will be upgradeable are the full fare tickets. Therefore, would the difference I'd have to pay in fare be the difference between "Lowest" PE and "Flexible" PE? That seems to be ~$2600 each way in many cases.

Are airport upgrades offered when flying in "Lowest" PE either via cash or miles?

Appreciate the help in advance!

[Neil]

You need an upgradable PE fare, so that's either W or S, if you just do a search for PE flexible on the VS site it will give you a W, which will be a lot more than an S. To get a price for a S you can either call VS or there is a different search engine in the flying club section on the VS site were you can select a specific fare code.

Upgrades with miles at the airport should still require you to be in the correct fare code (with cash it doesn't matter), but sometimes you can get lucky and either the agent doesn't know the rules or they need to move people and are willing to accept miles on the wrong fare instead of giving an op-up, but you can't bank on it.

Thanks very much for the quick reply!

Do you have to up-fare the entire itinerary or are they able to do it leg by leg?

It seems that I'm only able to search for the upgradeable fare NYC-LON-NYC and LON-BOM-LON instead of the entire trip.

[Neil]

On the website, it's per leg, on the phone they will be able to do the whole journey.