PE to UC Upgrade

Hi all. Wondered if anyone could help with this one. I'm a VA flying club member as well as a FVC member. Booked a holiday to Jamaica next June through VH and upgraded to PE for £500 each return. I now have enough points on my VA red card to upgrade to UC but after 3 phonecalls backward and forwarded between VA and VH now seem to have ascertained that this is not possible. VH advised it was and said to ring VA. VA advised that booked in H class and therefore needed a qualifying fare ticket for them to upgrade and said that VH could do this. VH says that it would be prohibitively expensive for me to pay the additional sum to upgrade the class of the ticket - would have been cheaper to just buy a UC ticket rather than use my miles. Problem is that the price they are quoting me to upgrade from PE to UC through VH is an additional £700+ each for return. This would then take the total amount paid to upgrade from Economy to UC up to over £1300 each for the return journey. Having just checked on-line, I can get a standard Z class return ticket on exactly the same flight through VA for £1200+ and this does not include my 10% discount! How on earth can this be correct? Anyone any ideas? Should I challenge the PE to UC upgrade cost with VH? Does anyone know of any way I can use my miles for an upgrade on this fare? Thanks all.

[Neil]

Firstly welcome to V-Flyer

VS are correct, you cannot upgrade a VH booking with miles because all VH PE tickets are booked in H class which is not upgradable with miles. As you seem to of found out the hard way upgrading with VH can be very expensive compared to a say Z class fare (lowest UC fare) direct with VS. Really there isn't too much you can do, the upgrade cost with VH from Econ to UC is about £1800 round trip, which if you take into account the amount already in your inital holiday cost is not cheap, but it sounds the VH are asking you for the going rate.

The only other option you have is that you might be able to upgrade to UC at the airport on the day of travel - but this will depend on the availability in UC, but whilst this will be cheaper (Sorry don't know the exact price) it still will be more than if you had bought direct with VS.

Sorry the news is more positive - but you at least you will know for any future flights.

Neil:)

[mitchja]

Welcome to V-Flyer

A PE to Upper cash upgrade at the airport on a V Hols fare is usually around the £600 mark, or at least it was when I last did this a couple of years ago. (K class PE fare upgrades to Upper are also roughly the same cost at the airport as well as I've also done this)

There will need to be availability in Upper Class though, which you might struggle with on the LGW/MAN B744's as they only have 14 Upper Class seats.

Regards

Thanks both for the speedy responses - lesson learned I guess!