Death of the free upgrade?

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Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 44 total)

  • pheighdough
    Participant

    I use paid for upgrades regularly, and I don’t mind paying my own money when the company has paid the majority for my ticket. As a BAEC slave I need the points at times. Recently went to NCE and for a little cash I managed to get myself and partner into CE, which was empty.
    I’ve also flown DXB-LHR recently, as it was my own money and a daytime flight I paid for WT only. On check-in I was offered a cheap upgrade to WTP, but then not permitted to check in on-line. At the airport I happily accepted CW seats…!


    flydrive
    Participant

    Like others, I’ve taken advantage of the paid upgrades from economy to club in Europe on BA. I think it is worth the extra £50, esecialy when the initial ticket was deeply discounted. On long haul for personal travel I’ve taken to booking WT+ and upgrading. The points are minimal and usually recouped on the same trip. The only problem is securing the upgrade, so you need to be ok with not getting it. On a recent trip to YVR, the outbound upgrade was obtained with points about 2 months ahead of travel, but the return was never available. I was ready to complain at the airport, when my partner and I were gifted upgrades to CW. The cabin was not full, so it is still not clear to me why BA did not want to take my avios and would rather give me the upgade, but we did not complain!


    nathinfor
    Participant

    The option to pay for an upgrade is nice. But one risk I see from airlines extending the comcept of selling upgrades at a discount is more and more people switching to economy tickets knowing they will have a high chance to upgrade later on at a cheap price instead of buying an expensive premium ticket on day one.
    This could result in less and less premium tickets being sold and airlines either scrapping premium capacities or increasing prices.

    As for auction, I find the concept rather unpleasant. I don’t want to fight for my seat. And I would regard negatively an airline which treats customers that way. Like throwing a bone to a pack of hungry dogs…

    I got upgraded once or twice in my lifetime. I never expect it, I never beg for it. And when it comes it’s just a nice surprise that makes my day and makes me suddenly love that airline. i would like it to stay that way.


    JohnHarper
    Participant

    I’m delighted that free upgrades are becoming a thing of the past. More and more, airlines have found ways to improve their revenue management to avoid the situation happening. I would also like to see an end to mileage upgrades too. If people what to travel in the premium cabins they should pay for it either with money or with the full whack of miles. There are always a range of fares available some of which are very reasonable for the service offered.

    I find more and more I stick to flying LH, LX, QR and SQ because the protect the integrity of their offering and the people around you are not gawping and looking to drink every last drop of premium alcohol that they would not pay for and generally giving the crew a hard time. I understand that SQ and QR crews enjoy working in the premium cabins because people know how to behave, similarly I’ve heard several reports that BA crew hate it because people do not know how to behave but then isn’t the statistic something like about 30% of people in BA F are actually paying for it?


    TiredOldHack
    Participant

    JohnHarper – in other words “Keep out the riff-raff.” Oh-kay….


    rferguson
    Participant

    There were definitely a LOT of free upgrades on the flight home I worked from the East coast last night. 36 from Y —>> W and 21 from W ——>> J. Y was massively overbooked. So don’t lose hope of a freebie 🙂 Just make sure you have no special meal in your Exec Club profile if you want an ‘involuntary upgrade’ as you won’t be selected if you do. Also. it does help to be very nice to the check in/gate staff and ask politely ‘if the flight happens to be oversold in my cabin could you possibly note me as an ‘SFU’ (Suitable For Upgrade in the system). This is the advice I give to people asking me ‘can you get me an upgrade for my flight’ and it seems to have a decent success rate. Especially out of North America.

    @ johnharper you are right about crew preferences at BA to a degree. The most junior crew do tend to ‘get left’ with the Club positions. Although First usually gets snapped up pretty quickly (as does upper deck Club on the 747 – it’s seen as a nice position to work). Then economy seems the next most popular. Last is Club on the main deck. The main reason being that we just don’t feel we often have enough resources for the number of passengers we are serving. When everything is running smoothly it manages ok. But as the CSD is part of the J service if there are any issues (ife failure, complaining passengers etc) and they have to remove themselves from the service it can just D R A G on for hours.


    BigDog.
    Participant

    JohnHarper – 19/02/2014 13:55 GMT
    +1

    Companies which seek short term revenues over truly valuing and positioning their premium proposition are in a race to become bottom feeders.

    In my business, not infrequently have I been informed my rates are excessive and should I want the business then respond with a lower figure. Others see the value and am invited back when they realise it. In the long run, if one wishes to portray and maintain a premium image one needs to walk the talk and not devalue it.
    I would suggest that those airlines (or any company) which has a culture of discounting, free upgrades (to any TDorH), freebies, MFI type sales do not perceive (nor aspire) themselves as providing an exclusive service or product.


    rferguson
    Participant

    An airlines goal is to fill those seats – ALL of them.

    If an aircraft is configured with say 14F, 70J, 40W and 185Y seats an ideal scenario would be to have 14 paying a First Class fare, 70 a Business class one, 40 a traveller plus fare and 185 an economy fare. This seldom if ever happens. The reality is depending on the route, the day of the week and the time of the day there are different demands for different cabins.

    If an airline has zero seats left in Economy and Premium economy but thirty left in Business (that it knows it may only sell two or three of) are they going to leave their ‘available inventory’ in economy as zero? Hell no. They will sell another 20 economy fares knowing that they will be able to seat everyone some where.

    And a frequent flyer program without the possibility of using points to upgrade cabins would be an extremely unpopular one.

    In fact – I think any airline that only sat those passengers that had paid the relevant fare to sit in that cabin would likely have to be generously subsidised by it’s government of would go bankrupt. Hence I do not know of any airline that doesn’t use ‘involuntary upgrades’. People may think that the likes of Singapore or Qatar to not do ‘invols’. They most certainly do. In fact my folks were upgraded from Business to First on their LHR-SIN sector last week on Singapore.


    JohnHarper
    Participant

    rferguson – 19/02/2014 14:41 GMT

    Maybe SQ and QR do ‘invols’ occasionally but they are occasional and I doubt either oversell Y because they may have empty seat in F & C.

    I recounted in a trip report just before Christmas how Mrs JH and I were the only passengers in F on a SIN-LHR service and the Inflight Supervisor told us that passengers in Y had been off loaded to avoid upgrades that night so yes they may happen but if you talk to people who are at the top end of the PPS Club they will tell you they happen very rarely and most people at that level have never had a single one.


    rferguson
    Participant

    JH what I agree with you on is that when invols have to be done there should be a selection process in place instead of it just being done randomly. I remember some years ago at BA we were seing entire families with children being upgraded to Club while cardholders were left down he back.

    This is totally unacceptable and cardholders should be upgraded first in order of status. This did frustrate us (the crew) and we did constantly feed this back. I guess the powers that be must have eventually listened as it was (finally) addressed.


    LuganoPirate
    Participant

    Company policy is that LH and LX do not offer free upgrades to F. They will from Y to J if overbooked and it will be offered first to their top tier status flyers.

    The only exception is if an “HON” status traveller is in J which is overbooked, then they will upgrade him/her.


    SimonS1
    Participant

    Interesting comments rferguson.

    My only observation was that I thought I read somewhere (and correct me if I am wrong) that on average only 10% of people travelling first class on BA pay the fare for the journey. The rest of the seats are more likely to be occupied by crew (deadheading/standby), friends of crew, people on reward flights, celebrities who have bought an economy ticket expecting an upgrade, upgraded BAEC members etc etc.

    That being the case how does First Class retain its lustre? And don’t you just end up annoying those people who have paid and then find themselves next to someone on some form of beano. Or do the real first class travellers take to the likes of SQ.

    In fact if it happens regularly why not just remove the 14 first class seats and install say 40 economy or WTP? In a similar was is the fact that fewer and fewer people pay to travel on CE (relying on cheap upgrades instead) one of the reasons for the new ‘enhanced’ seating being introduced and featuring smaller legroom?


    rferguson
    Participant

    Hey Simon. Yup, I believe the ‘average’ is three people out of 14 are paying a full F fare. But we all know how the law of averages works – on some routes (say JFK/LOS) on some days the cabin is 100% full of fare paying F passengers.

    The others are a combination of Avios upgrades, promotional sectors (ie buy a full J return get a free F upgrade one way) etc etc. Some grades at BA – certain bands of management, flight crew and CSD’s – are also entitled to a limited amount of First class travel annually.

    The Air France CEO was recently interviewed and called First class cabins a ‘marketing gimmick’. And imho in most cases he is right.
    His comments and the link are on this page:

    http://www.businesstraveller.com/opinion/aviation/has-first-class-had-its-day


    ChrisJR
    Participant

    My experience with BA recently has been very good. I have received three complimentary upgrades from WTP to CW with BA in the last 18 months flying UK to/from Nigeria (I have probably flown 10 returns on this routing (some Lagos, some Abuja) over that period). Two of the upgrades were at the point of on-line check-in, and once at the gate. On one occasion I checked on the WTP cabin during the flight and it was only half full, so quite likely the upgrade was not due to capacity constraints.

    In addition, I have upgraded WTP to CW on this route using Avois 4-5 times over the time period which to me is very good value (cost between 6,000 and 10,000 miles plus a small charge of around £50 – given you still accrue your WTP miles, it marginal cost in terms of miles is minimal). I am only Silver (although will reach Gold this year almost exclusively from flying this route).

    More historically I was doubled bumped from WT to CW many years back flying Nairobi-London (I complained at check in as I had reserved an aisle seat in WT and they said only window were available. I refused to sit by the window, and WTP was already fully checked in, so CW was the only place to put me (it happened to be a window seat but I put up with it…..)). At the time I was blue status.

    I (and my wide) were also upgraded from CW to F on a redemption flight from SFO to London a couple of years back, although it was old first and we had 64J and 64K booked in CW so the difference was marginal – but still grateful and nice to experience F.

    I have never been upgraded on another carrier despite being LH Star Alliance Gold and KLM FB Silver, but I think it is good you get two free upgrade vouchers from LH once you get to Gold. That is something BA could do to further distinguish between Gold and Silver – for me the only other major difference between Silver and Gold is the ability to use the F lounge at LHR (I usually depart from B gate and like to get over there early, so not sure how useful this is), and that it may result in a higher probability of being upgraded.


    SwissExPat
    Participant

    If booked in J, I will always ask at LHR T5 airside desks if there are J to F cash upgrades available on long haul services. The last 10 times. I asked, 8 times I was offered cash upgrades for between £400-450.

    Then I assess if I will have sufficient time to visit the CCR lounge and the seats available (I was once offered 1a and 1k on 744 to CPT) and then decide ( if Mrs exPat is with me then it is a slam dunk yes) but mainly I say yes and pay the cash. Once I declined because I already had a. J seat upstairs in an exit row and being an overnight flight, even £400 was not tempting enough to “upgrade” to a cramped nose of a 744 for a skeeper service. £200 might have been the tipping point given what I had already had.

    One thing I feel is missing in this debate is the VALUE of knowing that you have the higher service offering in advance of arriving at the airport. I have often used the BA amex voucher for F seats booked months in advance. Knowing that I have these seats confirmed often months in advance and items like the spa treatments booked is of great value to me! You can really look forward to your trip. This has a value… How do you price this?

Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 44 total)
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