Help needed for booking tomorrow

Hi All,

I am looking at booking my flights from LHR to JFK tomorrow
Flying out 25th Dec returning 2nd January.

I want to upgrade 2 seats from economy to upper class. I know there is no set way of upgrades becoming available when I ring, but should I fancy my chances when I ring tomorrow that I will be able to upgrade... or... is it worth just purchasing an additional 80k in miles and just paying for 2 upperclass seats?

Any help greatly appricated.

Thanks
Matthew

I think you have a couple of options.

First, just call up and ask about availability. If you need to buy miles you can do it on the phone there and then - better than taking the risk.

If there isn't any availability things get more complicated. My best suggestion would be to make a rewards PE booking and wait to see if a UC becomes available (check the website by making dummy UC bookings on a twice daily basis!). If you're a gold member I think this is the best route as you could cancel the booking at any time for no fee (someone will probably tell me I'm wrong) and then make a cash booking.

Otherwise you need to decide if you really care about taking the UCDS or can stomach a PE with the hope of an upgrade!

There looks to be reward seat availability for the outbound leg on Christmas Day so assuming that's still the case tomorrow you could book that.

However the return doesn't open until tomorrow so you'll have to wait till then to check availability. I fear it may be trickier as US-UK flights are notoriously tighter for availability and the 2nd Jan will probably be very, very busy.

In terms of availability it doesn't matter whether you use miles to upgrade to UC or buy a reward seat outright. They both come from the same pool so if there's a reward seat available, you can do either. But if there isn't you can do neither.

If tomorrow it turns out there's no availability in UC on the 2nd, as Phoenix says you could still buy the 'M' economy return, get the outbound UC upgrade in the bag and hang on to see if the return becomes available at a later date.

Are you buying economy tickets and upgrading on miles?
If so I'd wait until upgrade seats become available before buying because the upgradeable Economy ticket is much the same price as cheapest PE, so if it turns out that you can't get UC then you have used a lot of miles for little benefit.
Just keep checking for UC seats on miles then phone in and buy your economy seats.
Dick D

As an aside, there's a 25% bonus on miles purchases at the moment

I've just updated a post as I booked 2 x 'M' into MCO a a while ago as there were no G's available.

I kept checking daily & sometimes twice daily, & 1 popped up yesterday afternoon which I grabbed, & another popped up this afternoon which I also grabbed pdq!

Good luck with whichever option you choose. Keep us posted.

R-P

Hi All.

Thanks for all the comments they were most helpful.

I am please to say (almost shocked) that I have managed to book both outbound and return flights in economy with upgrades to upper class using my miles for two people.

We ended up taking the last two upgrade seats on the return flight.

So So excited.
Thanks again for your help

Matthew

Well done y)

We love it when a plan comes together

Don't forget to post your Trip Report!!

R-P

[honey lamb]

Well done from me too. y)

Now don't forget to call VS on your return to ensure your miles are accredited to your FC account.