There’s no worse feeling before a long flight than walking through a luxurious business-class cabin knowing that you’ll be stuck in the back of the plane for hours on end in a cramped coach seat. But that doesn’t have to be the case. If you know how to bid successfully on airline upgrades, you can fly business or first class for a fraction of the cost of a full-fare ticket.
What is Upgrade Bidding?
Bidding on airline upgrades is basically like a blind auction for unsold seats on a flight. Over 50 major airlines use a platform called Plusgrade to let passengers bid on unused space in their business- and first-class cabins rather than flying with empty seats up front. Among the airlines that participate are Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific, Hawaiian Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, SWISS, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.
These are not like other online auctions, though. Only a few airlines actually publish their rules on bidding. Passengers are restricted to certain price ranges within which bids are accepted (so no bidding one dollar). Plus, you cannot see what competing fliers are bidding against you, so there is a lot of guesswork involved.
In short, it’s complicated. However, there are some simple strategies to help ensure your bid is successful and you can enjoy a first-class experience at a mere fraction of the price other passengers are paying.
The Offer Comes In
Once you make a flight reservation, the airline will email you with the chance to bid on an upgrade. Alternatively, you can log into your reservation on the airline website to see if you are eligible to bid.
By clicking on the upgrade link in the email or on the website, you should be redirected to the page where you can place a bid on your itinerary. You should see a sliding bar with a set price range within which bids are being accepted and an “Offer Strength” indicator that increases the higher the dollar amount you are willing to pay (of course).
You then select the amount you’re willing to shell out for an upgrade, enter your credit card information and agree to pay the amount if your bid is accepted. After that, you just have to wait and see if you’re successful. Typically, an upgrade will clear 24-72 hours in advance of a flight. If it does, you will be charged automatically at that time, while if you are not successful, you will keep your original reservation.
Now, for the rules. Like with actual tickets, airlines place many restrictions on the bidding process.
You can only bid on confirmed reservations, so you cannot place a reservation on hold and wait to see if your bid is accepted before committing to fly.
Whether you’re even eligible to bid on an upgrade varies from airline to airline as well, and will depend on what type of ticket you have purchased – discount economy, full-fare economy, etc. Airlines also typically only allow customers who have purchased their airfare directly from the airline a shot at upgrade bidding, so if you purchase through a third party like Expedia, you might be out of luck.
Bids are accepted per person and per flight segment, not on a total itinerary, so you will have to bid on each individual flight separately if you have more than one connection, and you must bid on each individual passenger’s reservation. This is especially important since upgrades are non-transferable.
Be prepared to pay. If you place a bid, you’re accepting responsibility to pay for the upgrade if it comes through, and bids tend to be non-refundable except when your flight is canceled.
Finally, in a bit of good news, if your bid is accepted, you can enjoy all the benefits and privileges a regular business- or first-class ticket would confer, such as extra checked bags or access to an airline lounge.
Strategies for Success
So how do you ensure that your bid will be successful? Here are a few key strategies I have found to work that should help you make the move up to business or first class.
Avoid business routes: The route on which you’re flying has a lot to do with how likely your bid is to be successful. On routes with a lot of business travelers, such as New York to London, there are likely to be more passengers paying for tickets. Leisure destinations, however, tend to have fewer premium travelers, and thus more empty seats to fill.
Size matters: It makes sense – the bigger the plane, the more seats there will be in business or first class. For example, Qantas’s A380 has 64 business-class seats, while the airline’s Boeing 787 has just 42. Which one do you think you’ll have a better chance of scoring an upgrade on?
Check your chances: Before you make a flight booking, check to see how full your flight is. You can do so by making a dummy booking of your potential itinerary and checking the seat map.
Class considerations: Remember, some airlines offer economy, premium economy, business and first class. Because of that, they might restrict which classes of service you can upgrade to and from. Some will only let you upgrade from economy to premium economy, or from business class to first class, but not from economy to business class or premium economy to first class. This can also depend on the route – whether it is short- or long-haul. So be sure you know what you’re actually bidding on before committing to the auction.
Don’t be alarmed: If you do end up placing a bid, you are likely to receive an urgent email (or several) from the airline telling you that other passengers on your flight are bidding on upgrades, too, and that you should raise your own offer to improve your chances. Don’t fall for it. These tend to be automated and have no relation to the bids actually being placed or seats filling up. That said, it never hurts to check your flight’s seat map to see how many spots remain.
How Much to Bid
This is possibly the most puzzling part of the process. How do you figure out how much money to bid? While the information out there on frequent-flier forums is mostly anecdotal, there are a few factors you should consider.
First, look at how much airfares on the flights you want to upgrade on cost around your dates. This will give you a benchmark against which to measure your bids and tell you whether the price range proffered by the airline is reasonable.
Second, do not just bid the minimum since this seems to be what most fliers tend to do. Even raising your bid just a little bit can dramatically improve your chances.
Finally, you can use a simple formula to calculate an appropriate range within which to make an offer. Take the cost of the ticket in the class to which you’d like to upgrade, subtract the cost of the ticket you have already purchased, and then offer about 20-40% of that amount.
For example, if you have paid $400 for your economy ticket, but business-class tickets on your flight are $2,000, the difference between those two prices is $1,600. Bidding between 20-40% would mean offering $320-$640.
While this might all seem complicated – and there are a lot of rules – the bottom line is that being able to bid on upgrades means many more fliers have many more opportunities to fly in business and first class, all for a fraction of the cost of normal full-fare tickets.
