Fifteen years ago my success with complimentary upgrades was nearly 100%. Elite status meant flying first class all the time.
However, first class upgrades have become nearly non-existent. Delta says only about 12% of their first class seats go to upgrades, while 15 years ago, 81% of first class seats went to upgrades, awards and employees.
American, Delta and United have all become adept at selling coach passengers upgrades to first class for tens of dollars, sometimes as little as $40. Delta will even sell long haul business class for as little as $299 more than coach.
U.S. airlines have done a complete 180, preferring to take the smallest cash payment from a once a year flyer over rewarding their most frequent, high revenue customers. I remember my jaw hitting the floor when United marketed a $59 upgrade to me by telling me the number of elite customers waiting for a complimentary upgrade I’d be jumping ahead of.
But these cheap ‘first class buy ups’ can be a great deal even as they make elite status so much less valuable. I recently purchased a couple of them and it caused me to refresh my thinking around how much I’m willing to pay. Six years ago it was $50. But with free less likely, and with inflation, my number has gone up a bit.
What’s your threshold for taking paid upgrades? I skip these offers on the shortest flights (I don’t value first that much more than coach) and – counterintuitively – I usually skip them when they’re cheapest because that is also usually when I will clear an upgrade for free. I do check how many seats are left for sale, though, to test whether my intuition makes sense that cheap means free is likely, since of course cheap may appeal to other passengers on the flight.
My rough framework goes something like this:
- is my free upgrade unlikely to clear?
- how much is the buy up, and how much per hour?
- what seat am I booked into already – how much do I want to avoid it? It’s one thing if I have an extra legroom aisle seat, but another if I’m in the middle seat back row of the plane.
I recently purchased two discounted segment upgrades on American Airlines trips.
- Washington National to Dallas – Fort Worth. It was a midday trip but it’s hub-to-hub on a Friday. I have rarely ever gotten upgraded on this route over the past decade. And the price they were asking gradually dropped from $500 to $200. It’s scheduled for around 3 hours and 15 minutes.
- Chicago O’Hare – Austin. This one was more marginal, also on a Friday, the price initially was $500 and went up to $600 before eventually falling back to $203. That’s the upper bound for what I’d consider. There were 10/16 first class seats taken on the seat map and 6 seats left for sale on this Boeing 737-800 at 18 days out.
The silly thing that tipped the scale for me? I’d finally get to try American’s pre-order burger, and I feel like I need to actually try it for this blog – so my calculation might be different than yours here!
Generally my price maximum for a paid upgrade domestically has gone up to $70 per hour. That’s when I’ll consider what alternative seat I’m stuck in. What’s yours?
And remember that if you don’t have elite status, you can save on paid seat assignments, save on checked bag fees, and board earlier so you’re not stuck gate checking your carry-on bag. You get extra space (I value for working comfortably) and on long enough flights a meal. You can value the food and alcohol at zero and still think this makes sense.