Upgrading at check-in

I called VA last night to ask about using miles to upgrade to PE for our flight on the 25th Nov to MCO. The guy said that there was only 3 seats avaliable for upgrade,(we need 4) so my question is, is there any chance of more seats becoming avaliable? PE is half empty on this flight.
My second question is, he said this would need to be done at the gate! Does that mean at the gate when you are about to get on the plane? or does he mean at check-in?

Thanks for the help.

Sam

Its quite strange,
We fly out on the 26th November. Normally the flight is not busy, but looking at the VA web site and Choose your seat, there are no seats available now in UC. Never had this before, I wonder why??

This could be why there are not enough upgrade seats available as the flights are busier than normal?

Not sure if you are on VS27 or VS15, but both flights look totally open in PE as you say. So there should hopefully be no problem with getting an additional miles upgrade over the 3 you have already bagged. Indeed, the fact that 3 reward seats are still available is a bit of a clue as to how open the flight is I guess. So I would have no worries about getting the 4 seats you want on the day. Just go to ticket sales (right opposite to checkin) and they should sort you out. Don't wait for the gate.

However there is a potentially better way to sort it. The revenue department is responsible for freeing up reward seats, and they tend to do this about a week before departure. So if you give Flying Club a ring around the 18th November, they will probably be happy to give revenue a ring to try to get the additional seat released. If you are Silver, or even better gold, they may even ask revenue earlier than this if the plane is really empty - this has certainly worked for me in the past. You may need to ask them nicely to ring revenue to check, as not everyone in VS Customer Service will do this without prompting.

Remeber to bag seats uptop in the bubble.

Originally posted by AlanA
Its quite strange,
We fly out on the 26th November. Normally the flight is not busy, but looking at the VA web site and Choose your seat, there are no seats available now in UC. Never had this before, I wonder why??

This could be why there are not enough upgrade seats available as the flights are busier than normal?

Not sure why you would be seeing no UC seats available Alan as looking at availablity on Expertflyer there are at least 7 seats available for sale on both 25/11 flights, albeit with just 4 Z's on the VS15 flight. I suppose the difference may be planned overbooking, but I this seems unlikly. As you say, it seems odd.

The OP is looking for 4 upgrades to PE rather than UC though, and I suspect that the 3 upgrades limit is just the normal limit that revenue apply to all flights.

Originally posted by sailor99

Originally posted by AlanA
Its quite strange,
We fly out on the 26th November. Normally the flight is not busy, but looking at the VA web site and Choose your seat, there are no seats available now in UC. Never had this before, I wonder why??

This could be why there are not enough upgrade seats available as the flights are busier than normal?

Not sure why you would be seeing no UC seats available Alan as looking at availablity on Expertflyer there are at least 7 seats available for sale on both 25/11 flights, albeit with just 4 Z's on the VS15 flight. I suppose the difference may be planned overbooking, but I this seems unlikly. As you say, it seems odd.

The OP is looking for 4 upgrades to PE rather than UC though, and I suspect that the 3 upgrades limit is just the normal limit that revenue apply to all flights.

Strange, maybe I am using Expertflyer wrong, but for the 26/11/05 VS 15 its showing only a total of 16 seats available in all classes (0 in UC, 6 in PE and 11 in econ)
That is my flight which I am saying is very full, and I had wondered if the 25th was as full

Just had a look myself and VS15 is showing as:-

J1 D1 Z0 W1 S0 K0 Y7 B7 L7 M7 Q5 X5 N2

for 26th Nov on expertflyer!

Originally posted by AlanA
Strange, maybe I am using Expertflyer wrong, but for the 26/11/05 VS 15 its showing only a total of 16 seats available in all classes (0 in UC, 6 in PE and 11 in econ)
That is my flight which I am saying is very full, and I had wondered if the 25th was as full

Sorry - thought you were talking about the 25th, the date the OP was querying. I had a look at both flights on the 25th for the OP, and they were wide open.

Thanks sailor

I'll try again around the 18th, hopefully I will get lucky seen as there is alot of avalibility at the moment.

Thanks

I am sure it will work out. If not, book an upgrade to UC for yourself, and leave the rest behind at the back[}:)][}:)];)

LOL I like the idea of that.

You may see less UC availability on LGW/MCO for awhile because VS are operating LHR/MIA with 340-300 aircraft (without suites).

dennis

Originally posted by AlanA
Its quite strange,
We fly out on the 26th November. Normally the flight is not busy, but looking at the VA web site and Choose your seat, there are no seats available now in UC. Never had this before, I wonder why??

This could be why there are not enough upgrade seats available as the flights are busier than normal?