It’s the morning of your first award flight. He paid $ 0 in airfare plus $ 5.60 in TSA fees to cross the country, and he feels great. That severe thunderstorm fast approaching from the south won’t be a factor – your plane will take off on time, even 15 minutes early, and you’ll be comfortably seated in an oversized recliner while sipping only California’s finest sparkling wine. Nothing will stand in your way and a great flight. You did not buy a first class ticket, but it does not matter, today you are going to go ahead.
Because there are three empty seats and you showed up at the door with a gigantic smile and a three-piece suit.
Yes, great opportunity. While that strategy may have been successful a decade or two ago, technology is working against it. Sophisticated airline computer systems track empty seats and work to fill them with the most appropriate passengers. “The computer” pays no attention to your attitude or appearance, and makes decisions about who to update based on what a customer paid for this particular flight, regardless of whether or not they applied a cash, mileage, or certificate copayment. update to the reservation and how much you spend with the airline each year.
Of course, the free (and many paid) updates apply only to domestic or regional flights on US airlines; If you are flying abroad or with a foreign airline, you may not be able to upgrade at all, unless you are willing to pay the full fare difference between the current price of a first class seat and what you previously paid to reserve. Many airlines in Asia or Europe do not upgrade any of their passengers for free on any flight, not even in a short hour-long drive. With other airlines or international itineraries, an elite customer who flies hundreds of thousands of miles each year may end up riding Coach with a dozen seats still open at First.
Like overseas airlines, the main goal of an American airline is to sell every seat on the plane at the highest possible price. They’re a bit more generous with filling premium empty seats just before the plane departs. When it comes to free upgrades, tickets for passengers with no income, such as an employee’s friends and family, appear at the bottom of the priority list, but an award ticket in which the airline (or one of its partners) picks up almost nothing is a not too distant second. On flights with high demand, such as routes with limited competition, an airline will sell almost all flights and maintain a very high ticket price for both First Class and Coach.
But on routes where one airline competes with many others, and during periods when the load on business passengers is relatively light, such as on vacation or on the weekend, there may be a handful of seats open in First. Class, even on the day of departure The airline will do its best to sell paid upgrades to bus passengers during the days leading up to the flight, but if empty seats remain, elite passengers are the first to receive them for free, in various priority levels based on how much you flew in the previous year.
If all eligible elite passengers have been upgraded or only a few lower tier elites remain, the airline can often offer an upgrade to any passenger at the time of online check-in or once they arrive at the airport. Some airlines, like Delta, have even experimented with allowing passengers to bid for an upgrade, allowing you to type in the amount they are willing to pay to fly in advance.
Assuming you didn’t pay for that upgrade at check-in or you weren’t eligible (which may not be when you’re flying with an award ticket), and there are seats remaining, the gate agent can assign them to the remaining passengers, including yourself. Typically this only happens when the trainer is oversold, in what is called an operational option or operational upgrade. In this case, particularly if the flight is running behind, a gate agent can choose passengers at random. Your goal at that point is to get everyone to have a seat so the flight can leave as quickly as possible.
If the stars align for your flight, you could, in this very rare situation, get that update for free. Being well dressed certainly wouldn’t hurt, but your attitude to the gate agent will have a much greater influence. Be patient and courteous, and consider handing over your boarding pass so that the gate agent will hold on and sit within your line of sight. If there’s a seat at the last minute and you need to move someone quickly, that someone could be you!
