Hi there, I'd be grateful if anyone could offer their thoughts on the below situation. I've made my very first Avios redemption with BA. I'm flying in Club World on the A380 from Hong Kong to London. If I turn up at the airport early, without checking in and approach the sales / ticketing desk, will they be able to upgrade me to first using Avios? Let me know if anyone has done this before or what tips they would best advise to get the upgrade. The ticket cost me 67,500 Avios and £69. That includes a connecting business class flight to Manchester from London so it's quite a sweet deal. Would be nice if I could elevate it to First on the Long haul as an extra perk on the day though. Any help would be very much appreciated. Cheers!
AFAIK, you can't upgrade at the airport. What you can do though, is keep a very close eye on Avios availability in First (and/or set up a Reward Flight Finder alert), and if space opens up you can call Executive Club. I've never done it same day, so I'm not sure how/if that would work, but hopefully space would open up a little before then.
Unfortunately I don't think that you can upgrade using Avios at the airport. (especially at outstations where you might not even find a BA-staffed ticket counter) You might however be offered a reasonable price for the upgrade by monitoring your booking via ba.com.
This is great advice. Many thanks. It's also very interesting as it shows not all airlines work the same. I have upgraded in the past with other airlines at the airport. So it's interesting that BA doesn't operate the same way.
