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Why ba.com’s ‘upgrade using Avios to Club World’ pricing may have ripped you off

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The abilty to upgrade a British Airways World Traveller Plus cash ticket to Club World, using Avios, is one of the most attractive parts of the Avios programme.

Upgrading from Economy / World Traveller to World Traveller Plus is a bad deal, because it is not possible from the cheapest economy tickets – the sort of tickets that leisure travellers will buy.  However, there are no restrictions on which World Traveller Plus tickets can be upgraded to Club World.

Any WTP ticket bought on ba.com,  even one bought in a sale, can be upgraded with Avios to a flat bed Club World seat as long as there is Avios redemption availability in Club World.

British Airways 350 2

But the process is broken …..

Over the summer I received a couple of emails from readers who felt they were being ripped off when trying to do this.  They would be quoted a price for a World Traveller Plus ticket but – when they tried to make a booking using the ‘Upgrade Using Avios’ function – the ticket price suddenly jumped sharply.

The good news is that there is a way around the problem.  The bad news is that a lot of people have probably over-paid for an ‘Upgrade Using Avios’ flight in recent months.

This problem seems to be limited to US routes only although I cannot be 100% certain of this.

Let me tell you about Dual Inventory Fares

Dual Inventory Fares are an interesting British Airways pricing initiative.  Put simply, it is a way of keeping a fixed gap between the prices of two different cabins.

British Airways doesn’t want the price gap between World Traveller and World Traveller Plus to get too big.  If it did, people who would otherwise have paid a premium to upgrade will decide not to bother with World Traveller Plus.  This costs BA money.

So, if economy flight prices are reduced to create a ‘too big’ gap between World Traveller and World Traveller Plus, ba.com will (and I am stripping out a lot of technical details here) automatically adjust the cheapest World Traveller Plus fare downwards.

This is actually a sensible business move by BA.  The reason it is called a Dual Inventory Fare is because you are sold a hybrid ticket type which exists in the BA booking system as both WT and WTP – don’t worry, though, this has no impact on your Avios or tier points which credit as usual.

But when you do ‘Upgrade Using Avios’ …..

When you do ‘Upgrade Using Avios’, ba.com makes a mistake.  Instead of giving you the Dual Inventory Fare, it gives you the standard World Traveller Plus ticket.   This means that you are overpaying for your ‘Upgrade Using Avios’ ticket.

It is easier to explain with an example.

This screenshot shows the cost of a World Traveller Plus ticket to New York between 5th and 12th February.

The fare is £818 consisting of £376 base fare and £442 of taxes and charge.  Click to enlarge:

Upgrade Using Avios example 1

However, this is what you get when you try ‘Upgrade Using Avios’.

The fare is now £1,212 consisting of £684 base fare and £528 of taxes and charges – plus, of course, 44000 Avios for the upgrade to Club World.

Upgrade Using Avios example 2

The actual cost of this ticket should be £898 plus 44,000 Avios.  The cash element should be the original World Traveller Plus price plus the £80 of additional Club World taxes and charges.

In reality, you are being asked to pay £1,212.  You are over-paying by £314 per person.

The good news is that, now you know there is a problem, you can fix it

There are two ways around this, assuming that it kicks in when you try to book your next US flight:

Call British Airways to book.  It seems that the call centre is able to upgrade a Dual Inventory Fare.

or

Do your booking in two stages.  Do NOT use ‘Book With Money, Upgrade With Avios’.  Instead, break it into two stages.  Book the World Traveller Plus ticket for cash and then immediately go into ‘Manage My Booking’ and upgrade it with Avios, or call BA to do it.  If, for some reason, it fails (eg the Avios inventory in Club World disappears) you can cancel your WTP ticket for a full refund under the ’24 hours cancellation’ rule.

Conclusion

If you are planning to book a World Traveller Plus ticket to the US on ba.com using the ‘Ugrade Using Avios’ function, make sure you check the WTP pricing for a standalone ticket first.

If the non-upgraded WTP ticket is cheaper, use one of the two methods above to book it for the original price.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (86)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Mike says:
    14 Sep14 September 06:06

    Why are the taxes and charges different when you upgrade?
    Air passenger duty is the same. So even though you are using avios, BA is effectively charging you £80 for lounge entry or what?

  • Ruth Findlay says:
    14 Sep14 September 06:36

    Ah! This explains a lot. I’ve been looking at upgrade using avios for Vancouver CW flights and it was always much more expensive than a stand alone WTP ticket. Now I know why and how to fix it. Many thanks.

    • JamesB says:
      14 Sep14 September 07:06

      +1, great article. I’ve been frustrated with this for some time now as I used to use money and UUA to book one way back to the UK from Asia but found that differences between cash WTP and UUA WTP on these could vary by up to a factor of 4. I already discovered that it was now better to buy and then upgrade but I had no idea what was going on.

  • Robert says:
    14 Sep14 September 06:45

    indeed, this has been the case for a while now. Just to add, there is a third option (even if this seems obvious), especially if the ‘Manage my booking’ upgrade fails and not because of lack of inventory (this happens a lot), just book online and call them to upgrade.

  • tony says:
    14 Sep14 September 07:06

    This is good to know – but on a separate note I’m not quite sure I understand the implementation of the dual inventory. LON-JFK r/t next summer is £500 if you can book into O class – and £1400 in T.

    • Rob says:
      14 Sep14 September 08:47

      It may be too far out for DIP to kick in. There are also time limits around when you see these fares. They drop away as you approach the travel date.

  • VinnyM says:
    14 Sep14 September 07:32

    This happened to me on a flight booking from LHR to Bangalore. 2 different prices were quoted for WTP and WTP+Avios upgrade to CW. This worked out at £100 extra for each of our 2 tickets. I took screen shots of both fares but did proceed to book the Upgrade with Avios ticket. I complained to Customer Services and after almost 2 months of back and forth emails BA stood their ground with a lame excuse along the lines of ‘keeping our fares competitive’. I let it go … life is too short ! But for next time, I know 🙂

    • Rob says:
      14 Sep14 September 08:48

      £100 is probably the extra ‘carrier surcharge’ that BA whacks on, as you see in my example.

  • Andy says:
    14 Sep14 September 07:54

    You live and learn! Can I clarify that ANY WTP ticket irrespective of fare bucket is eligible for UUA? If so, I take it that there is value in booking in some BA Holiday sales in WTP and upgrading after booking? I never considered this as an option previously as I thought (incorrectly it would appear) that BA Holiday bookings would be in a fare bucket that was ineligible for UUA.

    • Rob says:
      14 Sep14 September 08:49

      Not entirely sure about BA Holidays actually – I meant to say any ba.com fare.

      • bruciebonus says:
        14 Sep14 September 10:42

        Booked a holiday in the current BA sale (WTP flights + hotel) and managed to upgrade from WTP to Club one-way with avios + £44pp; I was told it was for additional taxes. The WTP fare was the lowest on offer for the sale. There was also no change / admin fee when I called as I made the amendment within 24 hours of booking.

    • Tom says:
      14 Sep14 September 09:50

      Not sure about WTP to CE but I upgraded CE to F using avios on a recent BA holiday purchase.

  • Alan says:
    14 Sep14 September 08:00

    Interesting and handy tip, thanks Rob!

    PS WordPress errors seem to be all sorted now 🙂

  • Richard says:
    14 Sep14 September 08:00

    If you book into WTP and use UUA do you get the avios and TPs based on WTP?

    • Tracy says:
      14 Sep14 September 08:15

      Yes. In theory you receive the Avios and TP of the WTP fare. However there have been occasions where people have received the higher TP.

      • Alan says:
        14 Sep14 September 08:31

        Also I’ve had quite a few times previously where I received zero TP & Avios on UUA bookings and had to get BA CS to manually add the WTP amounts.

      • Richard says:
        14 Sep14 September 08:57

        Thanks

      • john says:
        14 Sep14 September 10:16

        Something similar looked like it was going to happen on my brothers booking – he booked a redemption to SCL but they changed the day of the week so he got rebooked into a revenue booking class which was TP/Avios earning and also allowed seat selection. Flyertalk suggested this may be temporary until they open up redemption space, and sure enough about a week later the booking got moved into redemption booking class and seat selection erased. He’s not flying until March. If this were to happen nearer time of travel and didn’t get fixed in time, you might end up in a better situation.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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