Problems Upgrading ticket from Y to PE

I am flying on Wednesday to New York in Economy (O Class)(returning in Premium). I called this morning to find out what it would cost to upgrade my O ticket to an M class so that I could upgrade with miles. There were plenty of seats on the outbound in PE, but I ran into two probs:

1) With the new seating system, they cannot check on upgrading fares without releasing my seat. I have an extra leg-room seat and didn't want to give it up in case the cost of upgrading was too high. Seems very weird that they have to release seats to do this checking. Apparently it's the new system that is forcing this.

2) The agent said she had to check with colleagues to find a way around this. When she called me back she said that to upgrade it would cost over £1000! She said that this is because they have to re-fare the whole ticket and not just the outbound(which forces my return into W class).

Is this really true? Or did the agent go about it the wrong way.

I thought M class tickets had advance purchase restrictions, so you couldn't go to the cheaper upgradable class when close to departure.

There are also rules about having to upgrade both legs to upgradable, one of the reasons I passed on a one way UC upgrade recently...

Hmm. It's annoying because I tried to upgrade a month ago but it was way too expensive. The agent at the time said I should call back 72 hours before flight because they sometimes make it cheaper. No mention that the advance purchase requirements would keep it from happening

I had a similar issue a couple of months ago. Was flying to ORD, PE in both directions. I was on a K outbound and an H returning, and called up about the cost to change both to an S for the extra TP. Given it was only a week before departure, the agent said that in order to give me the S outbound they would have to change the return up to a W which would have come to over a grand, so passed up. Even more frustratingly, when I inquired about the same thing a couple of months earlier, it was only ~£200 to change both to S.

Moral of the story (at least, for me) was to do this as early as possible as the cost seems to skyrocket when you get close to departure.

Thanks for the reply. I will see what they say at the airport. Seems silly that Virgin would give up the extra revenue since they must realise that people wouldn't pay over £1K for the upgrade but might be willing to pay a couple of hundred pounds. With this approach, they will get no extra ££ from me. Unless they really think they could sell these seats at top price so close to departure.

Thanks for the reply. I will see what they say at the airport. Seems silly that Virgin would give up the extra revenue since they must realise that people wouldn't pay over £1K for the upgrade but might be willing to pay a couple of hundred pounds. With this approach, they will get no extra ££ from me. Unless they really think they could sell these seats at top price so close to departure.

Sadly a lot of what happens in the modern world is not down to people making logical decisions but being governed by what computers allow them to do. Of course the computers are governed by people trying to give some logic to a system that is never going to cater for every eventuality.
I suspect it is always going to be difficult upgrading a basic fare. I have tried once and failed, having got a very similar quote to yours.
All hope is not lost, I can't remember who recently posted but they tried for an upgrade, got a quote that was outside the budget and were then asked, "what is you budget?" and got a reduced quote. So maybe at the desk discretion overrides the computers?
Best of luck.
Dick D

[preiffer]

Simple : If it was cheap and easy to switch any ticket to a higher cabin, who in their right mind would pay full fare? (Cough: Look what happened to the US airlines over 2000-2010...!)

And if nobody pays full fare, the higher cabins don't exist. End of story.

That said, if the seat reservation system is screwing up such basic things as being able to check prices for upgrades, it's a lot more they have to worry about than people complaining about £25 reservations!

I've had them tell me the same thing...going to an M would refare the whole ticket and since the return was highly discounted and advanced purchased required blah blah it would be £1000+.

I've since learned to bite the bullet early and pay for M up front. It's usually only marginally more. More TPs to be had and easier to upgrade.

I forgot about checking on M class when I first booked. I think at the time, there was a very good sale on in Y so just went for lowest available. But good call to check the M class fare in future

I forgot about checking on M class when I first booked. I think at the time, there was a very good sale on in Y so just went for lowest available. But good call to check the M class fare in future

A "really good sale" for K fares is what screwed me the one time.

I had O tickets booked to Barbados for early January. Last Thursday morning I decided to get exit seats for £35 each. When I went to the seat map I was greeted with a message that I could upgrade the return leg to PE for just £100 each. Seemed a good price to me so that's what I selected. Everything has gone wrong since then!

It took a few days and lots of online chat and phone calls to even be able to see the seat map in PE. The few available window seats are disappearing before my eyes but I'm unable to allocate any for us. I keep getting told that there's a glitch in the system. At this rate, we'll be lucky to get seats on a wing and will have to swim home!

After spending a total of at least 10 hours online and on the phone over a 6 day period, our Premium Economy flights from Barbados are finally sorted. It took an email to Virgin Atlantic's CEO to get it done. "Problems with their new computer systems" was their excuse. The long delay meant that all the seats we wanted (upstairs) were gone, but at least we're on the plane at last. My compensation for all this time, trouble and stress? "Sorry" from the lady on the phone!