BA upgrade prices

[747 jock]

Does anyone know if there is a fixed price for paid upgrades done at the airport during check in for transatlantic flights?, and if so, what I should expect to pay.

Subject to prices and availability, I may upgrade from WT to WT+ or maybe even to club. The flight I'm on is a LGW to MCO.

Many thanks for any advice.

[Heathrow Harry]

normally varies with the load on that specific flight - I presume there are guidelines but they aren't public

[chrissw]

All I can tell you from my experience is that it varies. Examples:

1. LHR-ICN (Seoul Incheon) with BA back in 2013: outbound upgrade from economy to premium economy (WT to WT+ is BA-speak) was about £200. For the return trip, the same upgrade was around £100. I asked about this one at the airports.

2. Again in 2013, LHR-WAW (Warsaw) outbound economy to business upgrade was £79. For the return trip it was only £6 (six) pounds. That one I went for. It was worth it just for the "free" drinks in the lounge beforehand, even though the lounge in Warsaw airport is nothing special. These upgrades were through the BA web site.

I have heard other examples of really cheap short-haul upgrades, for example someone doing LHR-Gibraltar got an economy to business upgrade for £14. That was a number of years ago however.

[747 jock]

Thanks for the replies.

It's a flight I do on a fairly regular basis and normally just go for an emergency exit row seat for £50 (I'm a silver card holder so can do this 2 weeks prior to the flight) but on my trip this month, all of these seats are already taken so I thought I'd see about an upgrade instead.

[PAXboy]

I think that any carrier doing this now will charge what they can and it's 'take it or leave it'. Once they have quoted, they won't negotiate as that would lead more people to think they can lower the price that way. That was the problem with the era of 'free upgrades'.

I favour the quoted price over the auction process. What makes the auction clever (for the carrier) is that only the winner know what prices was actually paid, as opposed to any pax being able to ask.

[Jarvy]

Back in 2014 I checked in online with BA to Dubai and was offered an upgrade from WT to Business for £300. But it hasn't happened since.

[IThink]

As others have said Airport Upgrade prices vary and range from the difference between your fare paid and full fare for the cabin you want and at the other end of the scale a bit of a bargain. Anything other than this, particularly any fixed price menu would devalue the product and no one would buy the normal price.

In my experience if you want to get a cheap upgrade the POUG upgrade offered through BA.COM in MMB are the best deals, you only get offered when the cabin is undersold and again there is absolutely no consistency or pattern in the offer. Expect the offer to appear in MMB after 72 hours from booking - but it can appear anytime up to the day of departure from that point onwards. It is also selective, in fact if you are on the same flight as colleagues you may find that you are not offered and others are.

[malcolm380]

my only experience was MIA-LHR on BA in 2009. The offer was $400 from WT+ to CW. I didn't take it :(

[MichaelOLearyGenius]

I was coming back from LA tonight and the guy at the desk beside me was asking for an upgrade from WT to CLUB and they said they could do it for $1050.

[Hyph]

A double-cabin upgrade, paid or otherwise, is a very rare event on BA. It should not be possible except in cases of disruption. The official BA policy is a maximum upgrade of one cabin.

From World Traveller, you may only upgrade to World Traveller Plus - except for Short-Haul or certain Medium Haul routes where WTP does not exist, in which case you may upgrade to Club Europe/Club World).

Where WTP is available, the cabins are small (smaller than Club World) and are often full as they are very popular with business travellers (who will be hoping to score an upgrade to Club World - ha!).

Paid upgrades may be available in advance via the Manage My Booking function on ba.com, at check-in online (including via the app) and are also available for purchase at the airport, if you ask.

If you book your ticket with a travel agent, upgrading online is difficult, if not impossible, because (AIUI) the travel agent "owns" the booking and BA cannot modify it until it is released to airport control at check in time. In theory, the travel agent can do the upgrade but in practice I have never been successful in getting this to work, but maybe a different travel agent might have more luck, knowledge or diligence.

Online upgrades are also very hard to get if you have a connecting flight on your ticket - for some reason BA want to upgrade every sector, even if all you want is just a one-sector upgrade. If this is the case, an airport upgrade is your best bet - though you could try calling BA.

I should also mention that if you have a flight with any other carrier (even within OneWorld) on the same ticket, BA will not permit any upgrade.

Even if seats are empty, upgrades may not be available - or may not be available to you, depending on how overbooked the cabin you booked is, your ticket/booking class (i.e. full fare Y, or massively discounted Q) and/or frequent flyer status - or perhaps more correctly, your commercial value to the airline.

The moral of the story is that BA would sort of prefer to avoid the whole unpleasantness of upgrading people and would much prefer you to book and pay for the cabin you actually want to fly in. Unlike some carriers, they will permit a premium cabin/seats to remain empty, rather than fill those empty seats with upgrades - even paid ones.

My advice - if you're hoping for an upgrade of any kind, BA are probably the worst choice of airline on the planet. :{

[747 jock]

Just an update if anyone's interested. I didn't get the option to upgrade on the outward sector but I did on the return.

On the "manage my booking" part of the website, about 10 days before the flight I was offered an upgrade from WT to WT+ for $940 (flight was booked and paid for via an agent in the US, hence the pricing in dollars).
I thought this was too much extra to go WT+ so I left it.

Then 5 days prior to travel it changed to where I was given the option to upgrade from WT to Club world but as this was $1760, I also gave it a miss.
Then 2 days before my return flight, I checked the website again and the upgrade to Club had dropped from $1760 to $840, a deal that I decided to take.

[Metro man]

I got an upgrade offer a few years back of GBP79 on LHR - ZUR for an upgrade to Club Europe, which I took as the wife had so much baggage were looking at more than that if we went economy and paid the excess.

Prices vary greatly for upgrades, I once spent US50 to upgrade on LAX - Phoenix which was offered when I swiped my pass at the gate. In this case you would only get the cabin benefit as you're too late for the lounge and bags are already in the hold.

Premium economy cabins are relatively small so the chance of being upgraded from PE into business is quite good if you have the status and they're overbooked.

I have heard that if you regularly upgrade, the airlines deliberately might not offer you the option on every flight as they feel you are a business class passenger and should buy a normal business class ticket.:hmm:

[chrissw]

One hears lots of things about upgrades. The whole subject seems to have generated its own mythology!

[Pontius Navigator]

Aye, we got two free upgrades on Emirates Dubai-Capoe Town. I think my Panama hat did the trick.