Master List Of Airlines To Bid On Business Class Upgrades

Many airlines offer last minute upgrades as an auction / bidding system, and some offer them on sale at check in, or on the app.

Below I made a list of 37 airlines (in alphabetical order) with their paid upgrade policies, and links to how to either check if you’re eligible, bid, or see an explanation of the rules.

Most of these airlines are using the same system for upgrade bidding, but all with slightly different terms.

First, I’ll explain a little bit about the differences of the upgrade bids that airlines generally have, and the other variations for paid upgrades.

Then, after the Master List Of Airline Bid Upgrades, I’ll share some rules and thoughts.

Differences in Paid Airline Upgrades: Bidding vs Sales

Bidding Upgrades

The problem with any auction/bidding system is that there’s no way of knowing what you’re bidding against. Are you bidding in an auction with other people? Is there a mystery minimum bid on the route before they’d sell it? That seems likely, but then what’s the minimum?

Also, there is one major backend program that runs most all of these upgrades – “PlusGrade”. While airlines that use the system seem to have different terms and timings for upgrades, most have the same format.

With most of the airlines that use PlusGrade as their backend for you to bid on upgrades, you have to be “eligible” to bid for the flight, yet there are usually zero indicators as to what that means. Many just send an email, likely if they have empty seats in business class (or economy is oversold).

The nice thing about the links I provide is that you can usually click through and check if you’re eligible, or just bid, instead of waiting for an email.

Paid Discount Upgrades

There’s what I call “Paid Standby” – Asiana is an example, where you pay for your upgrade and if you don’t get the upgrade they refund what you paid. Their prices are often reasonable (and cheaper than a lot of auction results), and therefore worth the risk of having a hold on your card for 5 days.

The other paid discount upgrade option is simply paying for the upgrade when they offer online or at check in. For example, British Airways’ system for offering upgrades via the app is interesting (talked about in this FT thread). Most of these, you get an offer to buy an upgrade at a fixed price.

Either way, YMMV.

Whether or not there’s an opportunity, or even what the price will be, is all dependent on whether or not there are business class seats available.

The Master List Of Paid Airline Upgrades

Rules For Bidding / Paid Upgrades

First, note that I did not include premium economy upgrades, as a few airlines had info only on upgrades to premium economy. However, to properly cross compare, everything here is an opportunity to bid on business class, or in a few cases first class as well.

Know that every terms and conditions I saw made sure to note that your fare class – determining your miles earned, cancelation policy, etc… – is based on what you paid for. So if you pay for discount economy and pay for a business class upgrade, you still earn miles based on the discount economy.

If not obvious, you can only upgrade flights offered and flown by the airline itself. If you used AA miles on a BA flight, you would be looking to upgrade the BA flight.

Some airlines have further rules, like Virgin Atlantic requiring you to book direct.

There may also be fare rules I missed in my research. So my leaving the fare column blank doesn’t mean there are no fare rules, just none I saw.

I checked as much as I could and all the ones I left blank had no fare rules.

Again, the majority use the same system which all has similar terms, and never on any of those did I see any rules preventing award tickets from being upgraded. It seems to me that an airline shouldn’t care what fare class you are and that this is just a way to increase revenue, but the terms are non-existent when it comes to fare classes.

Conclusion / A Call For Data-Points

I hope this is useful or interesting for someone.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is to wonder if there’s a way to guarantee a cheap upgrade? For example, if you had status and could cancel, and you booked within the window of upgrades… Could you pay, check for upgrades, and then cancel if not? Then try again?

That may be more hassle than it’s worth. But since most are auction / bid based upgrades, obviously that wouldn’t work.

Please comment giving your experience. If you have ever bid on an upgrade, please tell me your route, airline, price, and experience. Your small experience will help me get my head around these systems, and help others.