Everyone loves to upgrade their class of travel, especially when it is cheap or ideally totally free. Usually once you have checked in for your flight, that’s it – you are travelling in the class you paid for.
Things have changed a little bit at British Airways with the latest release of their app. You can now upgrade your flight even after you have checked in.
A Little Upgrade Text
Being someone who can remember a time before mobile phones, I always thought app developers have it easy. The amount of upgrades that constantly come out for apps is mind boggling. Once upon a time you might be lucky to get a single patch for some software but not anymore.
Happily you can set your phone to update these automatically in the background, otherwise it is terribly frustrating having to do them manually. Therefore, you may have missed the last update text for the British Airways app.
My next thought was, “I bet this is to enhance revenue and they’ll ask you to pay!”. A logical thought, don’t you think? They are a business after all.
Yes, You’ll Pay To Upgrade
Turns out my thoughts were correct. In light of the fact that nobody reads their app upgrade messages, British Airways conveniently highlight it when you next open the app.
Catering For All?
As part of this one would expect that all premium cabins will be catered to the full load. One thing about paying for upgrades at the airport check-in desk is that often you are advised, “You might not get a meal” as it is too close to departure.
Paying extra and not receiving what to me is probably the essential element of the service is no good at all. On the few times I have done this, I have been lucky and got a meal as someone else declined theirs. Still, for these ones, you would hope there is food for all potential customers.
Overall Thoughts
From what I understand, while this upgrade offer tool post check-in is new to British Airways, it has been around on other carriers for quite some time. It is good to see this is going to be possible.
I think it’s a win for customers who might want to treat themselves and it’s a win for BA to fill otherwise unsold seats. As long as catering is available for the extra passengers, I’ll happily upgrade if the price is right.
What do you think? Are you someone who would upgrade that close to a flight, or not a chance? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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All images by British Airways.
