February 7th - We need to talk about upgrades
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When do airlines give upgrades, and who are the beneficiaries?
Spoiler alert: it will help if you marry a captain. But I wonder if upgrades are actually worth a huge amount? My very limited experience of business class travel suggests they may be overrated.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Friday the 7th of February. |
| 0:07.6 | I get lots of questions from people about upgrades. Here's one from Paul. We're heading to New York on a family trip in March. |
| 0:16.0 | How likely are British Airways to offer complementary upgrades? Is it at least worth asking the question? |
| 0:23.5 | Well, I'm afraid, Paul, I don't think it is. I certainly wouldn't bother. |
| 0:28.6 | Let me talk you through how upgrades happen, and this is about British Airways, but it pretty much |
| 0:34.9 | applies across the board. Like all airlines which have multiple classes, British Airways, but it pretty much applies across the board. Like all airlines which have multiple |
| 0:39.5 | classes, British Airways does upgrade passengers. But it's not a random exercise. It seems to take |
| 0:48.0 | three different forms. The first one is to reward commercially important passengers. They spend a fortune on the airline. They |
| 0:57.1 | typically have elite status, especially gold and gold guest list. They want occasionally to be |
| 1:05.1 | compensated for the fact that they or more likely their companies are spending a fortune. And so |
| 1:10.5 | therefore an upgrade from |
| 1:12.2 | club world to first class might well come along. Next, operationally necessary upgrades. What do I mean |
| 1:20.4 | by that? Well, if the airline has overbooked economy and there's nothing wrong with that, |
| 1:26.0 | but more people turn up than there are seats |
| 1:28.6 | available the problem can often be solved by upgrading some of them so you move passengers |
| 1:34.3 | from economy to premium economy world traveler plus on BA to make room for them you could actually |
| 1:41.0 | bump up some of the people in world travelerveller Plus to Club World. And many aircraft |
| 1:46.4 | have four classes, so maybe one or two club passengers might get upgraded to first. It's not, though, |
| 1:53.3 | a raffles. If, for example, you have spent a lot on your ticket, if you have, again, elite status on British Airways, your chances |
| 2:02.3 | are much higher. I got an upgrade on a BA flight from Moscow to London, from Economy to World |
| 2:09.2 | Traveller Plus, and that was because the flight was overbooked, and my ticket had been particularly |
| 2:15.1 | expensive. The third category that British Airways uses for upgrades |
... |
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