Reply to Lay flat flights with miles

Forum Index » Travel Discussion

Reply to "Lay flat flights with miles - worth it?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How does this work? You buy the economy ticket and then use mikes to buy an upgrade? How far in advance can you upgrade?[/quote]

That's the rub. You usually dont' hear until a day or two before. Rarely, they will announce it a few weeks in advance if busienss class is really empty.

I current have 4 United flights to/from Europe in June and July. One direction in July just had the upgrade clear. The others are all "waitlisted". All are miles upgrades.[/quote]

What is your status?  Don't make an average person feel like this is a reasonably achievable option.[/quote]

You don't need status to buy upgrades with miles. It doesn't even come to into play. Sounds like PP is using stickers/systemwide upgrades (or whatever non-AA airlines call them). But anyone can call up and purchase with miles at anytime. Those come out of a different fare bucket.

You probably know all this, mostly posting for others.[/quote]

Yes, but you are talking about booking non-saver award tickets, which take a very large amount of miles (like 150k one way in business to Europe, 200k one way in business to Australia).  Those are almost never worth the required miles.

It's the search for saver award tickets that is the real challenge and takes a lot of time and effort, but that's where the real value is in the game.[/quote]

No, I'm talking purchasing economy fares then using miles (plus a possible copay) to upgrade.[/quote]

Yes, but as described above, the actual odds of clearing the waitlist for anyone who is not very high elite is almost zero on long haul flights with lie flat seats. So it's not really a viable option for the general population.[/quote]

What? You can literally call months ahead of time, pay your miles, and be upgraded. [/quote]

I think you may have gotten extremely lucky, or looked at an unusually low demand flight/route.  As described above and in the linked article, it's very unusual to be able to clear the waitlist for mileage upgrades unless you have very high status- this is true across airlines, although United is discussed in detail here.  It may also be that you succeeded with mileage upgrades during pandemic times when demand was low.  [/quote]

OMG. There is no waitlist on the fare bucket I'm talking about. Status is irrelevant. I do this frequently (monthly) for both domestic and international flights and have for 6+ years. [/quote]

You are going to have to go into more detail in that case.  Are you talking about booking R class Premium Plus fares, and then upgrading those using miles? That may be a viable option, but you need to have PZ availability.  That is very rare months in advance.  It does happen more frequently before departure, and yes booking a Premium Plus fare (which are much more expensive than economy and often not that much cheaper than cash business fares) will get you higher on the waitlist than anyone coming from economy, including 1K and GS members.

But again, to understand what you are talking about, you will have to go into much more detail- fare class paid for, flight info (I really doubt this is happening on high demand flights), your status, etc.  If it was as easy as you seem to make it, upgrades would be much more common and the airlines wouldn't be able to charge high business class fares internationally if it was this easy to upgrade with miles.  That's why it's so hard on long haul flights.[/quote]

I have no idea how UA does it or what the fares in question are. But it's very possible on AA. [/quote]

Okay, but you still aren't listing a single one of the details.  It's possible on AA, sure.

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/upgrades-on-american-airlines/

But finding available upgrade inventory, and being above the elites who are also trying to upgrade on a long haul flight?  Not likely unless you are buying very expensive cash economy tickets.[/quote]

I purchase D or I (international discounted) and usually O (domestic discounted). Never full-fare.[/quote]

https://cwsi.net/aa.htm

"D: Business Fare.  Discounted business"
"I: Business class fare. Discount First/business"

So you are paying cash business fares.[/quote]

Yes? And I upgrade to F with miles.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics