Airport Specials - An actual example

Flew VS1 on Thursday. Flight was full in all cabins except J. Went to the ticket desk at LHR on arrival and asked them about paying or using miles to upgrade to the J cabin.

I was holding a K (PE) ticket which is most restricted and cost me around £900 return including taxes.

£1000 per person one way to upgrade to J outbound. I asked about any 'airport specials' and was told that this offer was one

£400 per person one way plus 20k miles to upgrade to G outbound. Again an 'airport special'.

I did not take them up on either offer. The ticket agent was very friendly and helpful so no issues here. I just was expecting the upgrade costs to be less than this. I could have bought a Z ticket at the time I bought my K for £1800 and I could have bought an S and upgraded to G for around £1200. So both airport specials are greatly more expensive considering the amounts quoted were one way upgrades.

Seemed odd to me as the J cabin had space and I am sure they must have OpUp'd people.

Paul

[Pete]

Both those you were offered aren't too bad considering the cost of a full fare J, plus the fact you can't normally use miles to shift a K class ticket, so it's still a deal. Bear in mind also that whilst Z may have been available at the time of purchase, it's an advance-purchase fare, so definately wouldn't have been available (normally) on the day of travel.

Obviously the airport deals will reflect how desperate they are to move people, and if they were only just over in the Y & W cabins, then it wouldn't have been a big issue. The commercial reality is that if they made the airport deals too readily available, then there wouldn't be as much incentive to buy a Z fare (or K, if you'd have been looking at doing a hop into PE from Economy). It's always a gamble - and I'll admit I often roll those particular dice!