BA Avios Upgrade Question

[Cfrost101]

Hi there,

I intend to book a premium economy flight from JFK to LHR and return, due to taxes it is cheaper for me to book a cash flight and discount with Avios.

My question is, I have lots of Avios and I want to upgrade to business. There is business class reward flight availability on my flight, if I discount my cash booking with Avios can I still upgrade my flight with Avios after booking and calling BA?

[memesweeper]

Yes. Normal rules about buying in the ‘right’ ticket class still apply.

If you’re concerned buy the Premium ticket for cash, discounted with Avios, now. Then immediately try and upgrade using Avios. If for some reason it doesn’t work (club award space is gone while you were booking, for instance) then call up and cancel the Premium ticket — provided you make the call within 24h of booking you can get a 100% refund.

[Biki]

I recently booked premium economy from LHR to MIA in cash with small avios contribution to reduce the cost. Then afterwards managed to upgrade both legs with avios to club. No problems at all

[Cfrost101]

Great I’ll try do it, thanks for the help!

[SamG]

All premium economy tickets you can buy on ba.com are eligible for upgrade. In fact you should always do it in 2 steps, the “book and upgrade with Avios” option will often put you in a more expensive WT+ fare to start with (for technical reasons that BA have never bothered to fix)

You can try doing the upgrade online in Manage my booking but rarely seems to work for me, in which case you’ll need to brave the phone lines!