Originally Posted by
DuncanF
Not even sure that always works. Just compared a flight + upgrade to club europe vs. direct purchase of club europe at BA. The costs? £558 + 20K miles for the former and £549 for the latter. Same flights, same days.
Same reason.
An example of a good use of miles for an upgrade:
Buy a World Traveller Plus ticket from London to Johannesburg, eg for £1,338.50 in February 2011. Use 25,000 BA Miles and £27.00 to upgrade to Club World. When you have flown there and back, you will have earned at least 14,100 BA Miles (for a Blue member), so the total net cost of the journey is £1,365.50 + 10,900 miles.
The comparable Club World fare for February 2011 is £4,066.50. There is a cheaper fare but it's completely inflexible so it's not comparable to what you get if you buy the World Traveller Plus ticket and upgrade with miles. You would of course earn miles flying this without having to spend any: at least 16,920 miles.
Moral of the story: If you are buying the tickets, do not use BA Miles to upgrade economy tickets. It's usually just a waste of space. Using BA Miles to upgrade from economy only really makes sense for those people who are flying on tickets that others (usually employers) have bought that must be economy but happen to be in YBH.