According to the Daily Express, regular traveller and author Tilly Bagshaw, uses two words to score herself a flight upgrade.
She says the unique phrase to remember is “revenue management.”
Bagshaw recommends booking an economy ticket and then calling the reservation team and asking: “Have revenue management released any first-class seats for miles upgrades yet?” reports Bloomberg.
She continues with the “useful” suggestion of asking how many seats are left and then saying that, if the plane has X seats unsold, why not release one for her. Apparently, they call her back the next day and upgrade her seat to Business or First on miles with 100% success rate.
She also suggests bringing gifts for the flight attendants in order to increase your chances of the elusive upgrade.
What Do We Think?
The truth is that real complimentary flight upgrades are rarer than unicorns poo. The likelihood of a regular traveller getting an upgrade is around the same as the chances of no one noticing the man who lit up on a plane this week. My personal opinion is that the only way to get a “free” flight upgrade is to pay for it using points and miles. I don’t believe that gifts for the staff will work either.
Flyers need to remember that the frequent high-end traveller on an airline will always be prioritised over your average leisure traveller. For your regular traveller, upgrades, like Hurricanes in Hertfordshire, hardly ever happen.
So What Works?
I travel in Business Class on British Airways regularly for free, but it is my air miles that get me my free upgrades and not luck. Another way to travel on the cheap is to book mistake First Class airline fares that come up from time to time. The third way to fly in First is to pay for your seat. Sorry.
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