Travelore Tips: How to Get Upgraded on Your Next Flight

Anan Kaewkhammul / Shutterstock

The only thing worse than waiting in a security line or a crowded airport terminal is squeezing into a narrow coach seat. Seat 32B, to be exact. As you enter the plane and prepare yourself for the next four hours of misery, you'll probably pass some happier passengers sipping on pre-departure beverages and sprawling across their roomy first-class seats.

So why aren't you joining them? Upgrades do cost something, whether that payment comes in the form of money, frequent flier miles or elite status. But you probably already have what it takes to sit up front or can find a way to make the jump more affordable.

Complimentary Elite Upgrades

Most first-class upgrades are given to elite frequent fliers who receive them as complimentary benefits on domestic routes. Although paid and award upgrades have priority, there often aren't enough to fill all the empty seats on a given flight. The trick to getting upgraded is thus two-fold: seek status and choose the right flights.

Consolidate your travel onto one carrier or alliance rather than distributing it among several airlines. If it costs a bit more, compare the price to what you might save in other benefits like upgrades, priority seat assignments and waived fees. But if you plan to fly with an affiliated airline, remember that complimentary upgrades generally only go to members who have elite status with the operating carrier. American Airlines, for instance, would rather upgrade a member of itsAAdvantage program before considering anyone from the Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Club.

Choosing your flights wisely is more complicated but simple enough in theory: Fly when no one else wants to fly. Consider leaving on a Saturday morning after everyone's returned home from their business trips or left for the weekend. Taking connections helps, too. No one likes to go out of their way, and these routes have more price-sensitive and typically less frequent travelers. As an added bonus, you might save money when compared to nonstop routes favored by road warriors traveling on the company's dime.

Your best bet is researching each carrier's unique rules governing its upgrade policy. American gives priority to connecting passengers, for example, and considers the time of the upgrade request (often when the flight was booked). United Airlines, on the other hand, penalizes a couple traveling together because there must be upgrade space for both or else the system skips over to the next single passenger. United’s upgrade policy also ranks passengers by the fare paid; sometimes spending $10 more for a higher cabin class can increase your position in the upgrade queue.

Paid Upgrades

In the days leading up to departure, upgrade inventory doesn't typically match the number of first-class seats available because airlines aim to sell them at full price. But carriers can still track the numbers closely. For airlines faced with a choice between giving a seat away for free or collecting some extra cash, money takes priority over rewarding loyal customers.

Upgrades can often be purchased at a discount compared to the regular cost of a first-class ticket. Some carriers offer this option at check-in or when you view your itinerary online, while others may have a fixed price or auction system at the gate. Keep in mind rules vary greatly between carriers. And unlike the treatment you would receive if you purchased a first-class ticket, you'll be treated according to the rules of the original fare. That means fewer frequent flier miles and higher fees for schedule changes.

But there are also some fares that are sold as economy class tickets that include an automatic upgrade to first class. Often called "Y-UP" fares, they'e not exactly cheap. They just happen to be less expensive than paying for first class outright. Elite frequent fliers may be offered similar instant upgrades when they book full-fare tickets even if they aren't advertised with the Y-UP name.

Award Upgrades

Carriers will let you pay for a regular ticket and upgrade it later using frequent flier miles. However, many upgrades still require a co-pay, especially for the cheapest discount fares. United charges as much as 20,000 miles plus $550 each way for a business-class upgrade between North America and Europe. If you want to upgrade a partner flight (e.g., using United's miles on Lufthansa), the co-pay requirement is dropped, though you will need to buy a full-fare ticket. Calculate how much money you will actually save for a discounted business-class seat before redeeming an award upgrade with both miles and a co-pay.

It probably comes as no surprise that upgrades are generally a bad use of miles. Continuing with United as an example, an upgrade within the U.S. is 20,000 miles plus $75 for a one-way flight. You could redeem a first-class saver award for just 25,000 miles. But some people never save enough for a free flight, can't find award space or just don’t want to travel more than they're already obligated to. Using miles in any way is better than letting them expire.

Operational Upgrades

Passengers with no extra money, no miles and no elite status will probably only enjoy a first-class experience thanks to operational upgrades (i.e., upgrades given at the discretion of the gate agent).

Is your flight's economy class cabin oversold? Someone has to move up to first class. Or conversely, a passenger may be willing to take a later flight, with a seat in first class as compensation for the inconvenience. Never settle for the agent's original offer, as there are many little things he or she can do in addition to doling out cash. Other issues like a disruptive passenger or an inoperative television screen might provide justification for reshuffling passengers on-board.

Stories about a well-dressed customer who asks for an upgrade are the exception rather than the rule. More important than how someone looks is that a seat is available, the passenger is friendly and the agent has a problem that needs to be resolved quickly. These upgrades are all about the luck of the draw. Rather than buying a new suit, consider trying out the other options listed above.

Contributed by Scott Mackenzie

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United And Delta Are Killing The Mileage Run. New Rules For Frequent Flier Programs Emphasize how Much You Spend, Not How Far You Go.

In February, a friend told me he couldn't meet for dinner in Washington because he was flying to Amsterdam for the weekend. Emphasis on the word “flying.” His itinerary had him spending most of the weekend traveling, but he’d stay in Amsterdam for only 14 hours, after connecting through Paris and Istanbul to get there; his return trip involved a layover in Minneapolis.

It’s a practice known as a mileage run: Buy a low-price airline ticket, in this instance $537, and fly not because you want to go anywhere, but to earn redeemable miles and progress toward elite status on your preferred airline. The core logic behind mileage runs is that airline points have a relatively fixed value, but the cost to accrue them can vary widely, so a low fare for a long trip can reap outsize rewards. Only when you’re taking a mileage run is connecting through Istanbul to get to Amsterdam better than flying there nonstop.

Mileage running arguably makes sense for some travelers, that is, the sort of people who don’t mind spending a weekend on airplanes going nowhere in particular. These people have a well-established subculture; the Mileage Run forum on FlyerTalk, an online travel discussion board, has generated more than 24,000 threads. But mileage running has never made much economic sense for the airlines. The purpose of a frequent flier program is to build loyalty and retain customers who generate a lot of profits. Mileage runners aim to buy tickets with the lowest cost per mile and extract as many points as possible from them; this is not high-margin behavior the airlines should want to encourage.

And increasingly, they aren't.

In the last year, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines have made two major changes to their reward programs that make mileage running a lot less useful. First, they imposed a minimum spending requirement to obtain elite status. Previously, you became a “silver” or “gold” or “diamond” flier by traveling a minimum number of miles or segments in a year. Now, to qualify you must also spend a minimum amount on airfare; for example the status tier for traveling 25,000 miles also requires $2,500 in airfare spent, or 10 cents per mile. (The Amsterdam-Istanbul itinerary I described above cost just 4.6 cents per mile.)

Then, the airlines blew up the definition of “frequent flier mile” so it no longer has anything to do with distance. Starting in 2015, fliers on each airline will earn five “miles” for every dollar they spend on airfare, regardless of where they go. A $537 ticket from Washington to Amsterdam via Istanbul will earn the same number of reward “miles” as a $537 ticket from Washington to Chicago.

Frequent travelers will get additional bonus miles, as they do now, but the bonus will also be based on dollars spent, not miles traveled. In case these rules weren’t confusing enough, that’s just for redeemable miles; for achieving elite status, “miles” still means miles traveled.

The logic of these changes is to reward passengers for generating profits for the airline, not simply for traveling a lot of distance. Business travelers who buy a lot of high-price tickets at the last minute will be rewarded more; bargain hunters will get less. And these changes come after a decade of shifts that have already made it harder to get ahead by taking mileage runs.

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Gary Leff, who runs the View From the Wing blog about air travel, notes three phenomena that have already cut against the mileage run over the last decade. Airfares have gone up and planes are more full, meaning it’s harder to find the sort of deeply discounted fares that make sense for mileage running. Airlines have increased the number of points required to get a reward ticket, which makes frequent flier miles less valuable. And they’re not giving out as many promotions in which travel earns extra bonus miles.

The last point is essential. Mr. Leff told me about a mileage run he took in 2003. United ran a promotion where its elite fliers could get five-times bonus miles, instead of the double miles they were ordinarily entitled to. So he flew round-trip to Singapore for $700 and pocketed around 100,000 MileagePlus miles, then enough to redeem for a round-trip business class ticket to Europe.

The new program rules are a disaster for this mileage run strategy: Even with a five-times promotion, a $700 round trip to Singapore would earn just 17,500 MileagePlus miles, not enough to redeem for a domestic coach round trip. But in some sense, it’s beside the point: Good luck finding either a five-times bonus promotion or a $700 round-trip airfare to Singapore in today’s environment.

“In many cases, they were already a much less attractive thing to do,” Mr. Leff said of mileage runs. “In many of the cases where they still made sense, they still make some sense.” That is, mileage runs will continue to be useful for travelers who are within a few miles of reaching the next elite status tier. The minimum spend requirement prevents travelers from building their entire path to status on cheap tickets, but one long, cheap flight can still put you over the hump to silver or gold as long as your previous trips were reasonably expensive.

Spend-based reward rules will put an end to United and Delta mileage runs based on mistake fares, in which airlines accidentally post way-too-cheap tickets. Last September, United erroneously sold various tickets for $5 each way, including from Kansas City to Washington; under the new rules, a mistake like that might get you a nice weekend away, but it will barely get you any reward points.

The new rules could become even more problematic for mileage runners over time. In 2013, United States domestic airfares averaged 15.3 cents per mile, well in excess of the 10 cents per mile United and Delta passengers must hit to satisfy the spending requirements. If fuel prices and airfares come down in the future, more travelers may find themselves traveling enough miles to achieve elite status but failing the spending requirements — and therefore not able to benefit from mileage running.

Travelers who want to keep their mileage run options open have a home, for now: American Airlines, which so far has not copied United and Delta’s changes. American has announced no plans to move away from awarding frequent flier miles in exchange for actual miles flown. Mr. Leff attributes this to American’s ongoing merger with US Airways: Mergers are complicated, and the fewer changes you make during them, the better. In time, the combined American-US Airways may follow suit, but for now it’s your best bet if you enjoy plane rides to nowhere.

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United Lures Frequent Fliers With Hot Meals On Some Of Its Shortest Fights

Contributed by Scott Mayerowitz, AP

This product image provided by United Airlines shows a Caprese on Asiago Baguette sandwich, one of a variety of the airline's new first class food options. The Chicago-based airline on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014 announced that it’s upgrading first class food options and replacing snacks with full meals on some of its shortest flights. (AP Photo/United Airlines)

 To win the hearts of frequent business travelers, United Airlines is going through their stomachs.

The carrier has been looking for ways to woo back some of its top fliers who defected to other carriers following a rocky merger with Continental Airlines. So, it's upgrading first class food options and replacing snacks with full meals on some of its shortest flights.

The changes, announced Thursday, mean that instead of potato chips, chocolate chip cookies and bananas, passengers on flights of at least 800 miles will get meals such as chicken and mozzarella on a tomato focaccia roll and turkey and Swiss cheese on a cranberry baguette. Currently, meals are only served on flights of 900 miles or more - trips that usually last close to two hours.

Passengers on 13 extra routes, such as Houston-to-Des Moines, Iowa, will be getting full meal service starting in February.

The move comes as American Airlines goes the other way, eliminating hot meals on most flights less than 1,000 miles starting Sept. 1. The change - which upset many frequent fliers - is part of American's merger with US Airways and does expand meals to some US Airways flights that previously only had snacks. Delta Air Lines serves first class meals only on flights of more than 900 miles.

That means United will offer full meals on more short flights than its competitors, although each airline makes exceptions for some key shorter business routes like the 731-mile trip between New York and Chicago.

United already this month replaced two bland salad options with four heartier choices. Starting Sept. 1, three frozen and reheated sandwiches currently served will be replaced by eight sandwich and wrap choices made daily. In the fall, it will add Prosecco sparkling wine to its beverage menu.

"Customers shouldn't have to make sacrifices just because they are onboard an aircraft," says Todd Traynor-Corey, the airline's managing director of food design.

That might be true, but in an industry known for its razor-thin profit margins, food has always been a target of cost-cutting. With U.S. airlines each year carrying 645 million passengers domestically, every little food decision had big implications. In the 1980s, then American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall famously decided to remove a single olive from every salad. The thought was: passengers wouldn't notice and American would save $40,000 a year.

It's been a decade since most airlines stopped serving free meals in coach on domestic flights.

Dennis Cary, an airline consultant with ICF International, says meals alone won't drive passengers to one airline over another, but can help leave a better impression of a flight.

"It's on the margin," Cary says, "but it's one of the things people like to talk about."

United has been struggling since its 2010 merger with Continental. It lags behind American and Delta in the number of planes with Wi-Fi, its on-time performance slipped and a series of computer glitches have left passengers angry. Business travelers who fly weekly got fed up with the repeated problems; other airlines were successful in luring some away.

CEO Jeff Smisek has struggled to collect the same high airfares from business customers that other airline do, leading to pressure from Wall Street analysts. Improving food could be a start to winning back some passengers.

A hot meal on a two-hour flight might not sound like a necessity, but for busy frequent fliers it might be the only chance to grab a bite.

"Business travelers, running from a meeting to catch an earlier flight, don't have the time stop and pick up food along the way," says Gary Leff, co-founder of online frequent flier discussion site MilePoint.

Travelore Tips: How To Rack Up Miles To Fly For Free

Plane tickets take a huge chunk out of your travel budget -- international flights can cost $1000 or more, which could be an extra month of travel if you're frugal. Rack up some air miles and you can hit the mile high club for free.

Take A Number

Frequent flyer numbers are the numbers that each airline assigns you in order to keep track of your miles and give you rewards for your loyalty. Each airline calls their program something different. For example, United's is MileagePlus and Delta's is Skymiles -- but really all that matters is that you save them until you have enough for a free ticket.

You get a number for every airline you fly, but the fastest way to a free ticket is to stick with one airline (the whole loyalty part) and make sure it flies to international destinations. Remember to fill in your frequent flyer number every time you book a ticket.

Plastic in Your Pocket

Getting into debt is a terrible idea, but charging purchases on a credit card earns you miles. If you can commit to paying that sucker off, then charging your flights makes sense mile-wise. Most cards will offer a large mileage bonus for your first purchase and some will offer bonus miles for purchasing certain products. Some cards are for specific airlines and others, like American Express will let you use their points to buy tickets for almost any airline's program.

Buddy Up!

Many airlines have formed partnerships with other airlines around the globe -- you'll see brands like SkyTeam, Star Alliance, and Oneworld. These partnerships are like the 69 of airline travel -- everyone wins. Here's how this works: Let's say you live in Chicago and you've decided to do all of your traveling on United. You can earn miles by flying on United, or, you can earn miles by flying on any of United's partner airlines such as Lufthansa, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines, or South African Airways (among others). The miles you rack up can be redeemed with either United or its partners, scoring you a free trip somewhere way cooler than the windy city (sorry, Chicago). Sometimes there are restrictions so make sure you check before your itinerary is set in stone.

OTP TIP: When traveling, don't always take the fastest route. If you don't mind spending a few extra hours in the air, use sites like Kayak or Hipmunk to book your flights to connect through remote places and earn some extra miles. Sometimes this option can even be cheaper.

Eyes on the Prize

Airlines don't just partner with other airlines; they cross-breed with companies in a number of industries, offering miles for purchases of random items like dog food (Purina) and soup (Healthy Choice). So how does puppy chow get you to Australia for free? Meet David Phillips, better known as the "Pudding Guy," who took the miles-collecting thing to a whole new level in 1999 when he bought $3000 worth of pudding to rack up enough miles to fly him anywhere he wanted, for free, for life. While buying six tons of snacks may not be for you, know that airlines run all kinds of miles promotions with these partners and if you're in the market for free travel, keep an eye out for miles in the aisles.

Gift Yourself

Airline websites sell all kinds of things that can score you miles. When you purchase products or services that have agreements with the airlines you can bank even more miles without having to get on a plane. Your family never has to know their birthday gifts earned you a free ticket!

Racking up miles may feel like clipping coupons, but knocking down the cost of airfare is one less barrier to discovering the world. You'll be glad you held up the check-out line with your thousands of pudding cups like a senior citizen when boarding that flight the fuck out of here.

Contributed By: Sarah Binion

Travelore Tips: How To Use Those Confusing Frequent-Flier Miles

It's almost like having a million free miles and nowhere to go. Travelers today are frustrated in their efforts to spend frequent flier miles with labyrinthine rules, blackout dates, and jam-packed airplanes blocking every attempt to cash in.

Charisse Jones, national business travel correspondent for USA Today, joined Carl Quintanilla on TODAY to offer fed-up fliers a guide to making the most of those miles they have piling up. The veteran reported admitted the complex – and constantly changing – rules and regulations are tough to keep up with.

“My mind is always spinning,” she told Quintanilla.

Basic math is part of the problem. The frequent flier programs, which American Airlines rolled out first in 1981 with 283,000 members, are bursting at the seams with hundreds of millions of fliers today. “But there are only so many seats an airline is going to make available ‘for free’ or as a reward,” Jones told Quintanilla. 

“Airlines have also cut back on the number of seats they're flying, period. They want to make sure their planes are full since an empty seat is a money loser.”

So what’s a flier to do when there’s not enough to go around? For one, Jones said, hang on to miles for a flight that’s worth it -- think dream trip to Paris, not a domestic hop valued at $300. Be prepared to spend big, with cross country flights costing up to 60,000 miles according to Jones.

Don’t let your miles expire; even a small purchase like a magazine subscription can keep your account active said Jones.

And finally, “Don't despair,” she said. “There are other experiences, and merchandise you can purchase with your miles.”

Airlines are ponying up some tempting consolation prizes for the foiled reward-seeker, starting as low as United’s 100 mile song download and flying as high as Delta’s GE Profile 57 bottle wine center for 240,800 miles, which, according to Jones, is “really for the person that has so many miles they can’t spend them all on travel.”

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For as little as 10,000 Delta miles, Jones said you might be able to “get a pair of baseball tickets to see your favorite teams play...and we’re not talking about sitting in the bleachers eating popcorn and drinking beer. These are the VIP seats.”

46,150 American miles can get you a night at the five-star Athenaeum Hotel in London's tony Mayfair district, Jones told Quintanilla.

Or, you could invest in some good karma and give your miles to charity. Jet blue will kick in $10 for every 1,334 points (miles) you donate.

Contributed by Dana McMahan