How easy is it to upgrade from Economy to Upper Class?

Hi one and all,

I’m new to the site and this may (probably has) been discussed before but…

My wife and I are looking at booking flights for June 2017 from London to LAX and then Las Vegas back to London. We have enough miles for both of us to upgrade from Economy to Upper Class for both flights. My question is when is the best time to book to guarantee the upgrades? We are fairly flexible on dates too so I can’t see it being a problem of us missing out but we’ve never used our miles before.

Any help on this is much appreciated!

there is no guarantee upgrades will be available!

Firstly, you need to be on upgradable fares in Economy - if you just book the cheapest fare, it will almost certainly not be upgradable. You can pay the difference between what you originally paid & an upgradable fare at a later date though.

Secondly, you need the elusive G fares to be available (G = Upper Class reward). Just because Virgin are still selling seats in Upper for cash does not mean they will release G fares. On LHR-LAX you stand a reasonable chance of getting upgrades if you are flexible with your dates. LAS-LGW may be more difficult as there are only 14 Upper Class seats on this route & they regularly sell out for cold hard cash. You may be better to consider an internal flight back to LAX or SFO for a better chance of Upper Class rewards on the return leg.

Your best bet is to give Flying Club a call - they are really helpful and can search what dates are available for you. Also remember you cannot pool miles between Flying Club accounts. You have to have enough miles to pay for an entire sector(s). It's 25k miles to upgrade from Economy to Upper Class (one way), so you'll each need at least 50k miles in each account - or - one of you could have 75k and the other 25k, which is fine as you can spend your miles on whoever you like.

I wrote a guide on how to book and upgrade over on FlyerTalk

The slight fly in the ointment is that you can generally only book direct with VS from 330ish days before the flight. This means that you won't be able to book until sometime in Jul 16. You can book with Virgin Holidays much earlier but that will rule out being able to use your miles.

Virgin have already said they intend to move their whole ticket booking system over to the Delta ticket system "in 2016" but there's little extra information on when exactly this will happen. It's possible that this will happen before you book your tickets in which case nobody really knows what effect this will have. We all assume it will simply mean more reliable IT but VS could also choose that moment to bring in sweeping changes to their ticket rules - we just don't know.

Thanks for all the input and insightful information so far. We have enough miles, just looks like it will depend on availability!

Hello HighFlyingGunner

How easy? Well I have so far booked three Economy to Upper Class upgrades with Virgin and got lucky every time. But eggtastico is right, there are no guarantees. You have flexibility which is to your favour. We also have flexibilty and would never dream of travelling in the high-demand school holidays periods. We have always got flights on the exact days we wanted, and have always booked as soon as the flights are released. They can soon get snapped up. My motto is: if you see 'em, grab 'em!

Flights to cities with more than one flight daily may be easier e.g. NYC

I usually look on the Virgin website to see if reward seats were available and then call the Flying Club who have been more than helpful.

Another tip is, if you see flights that suit, book them and ask if they will reserve them before purchasing them. This is ideal if you need time to think, discuss with others etc. I do this so I can sort of leave cover before I pay for the tickets as I rely on colleagues agreeing to cover my absences from work. They will reserve for up to 3 days i find.

Good luck, I hope you get the flights you want.

as everyone has said ... with the help from all the great people on here I managed o book 2 UC upgrades at realise date. That was for 2 man - mco during October (not school holidays) and I got the dates I wanted and as said they did hold until I checked with OH

Lisa x

My tip would be get in early and keep checking.
We fly to Orlando which only has 14 seats in Upper and so not many rewards, but have managed it a few times.
Also consider being flexible with dates. We found coming home on Sunday rather than Saturday is a good plan.
Dick D

I would check as soon as seats are released, as others have said no guarantees but I've always been lucky when booking this early, even in school holidays, which I'm confined to as I work in a primary school. If LAS flights are proving difficult consider doing LAS- MAN, usually better g availability on this route.

We recently did EC to UC upgrade to HKG for next Jan, 2/3 of dates were available, basically anything that wasn't a weekend

Maybe this is an easier route to get them on though