Upgrade with Avios at airport?

[Juliesue26]

I have a BA flight booked to male this Thursday.
It’s premium economy.
Paid by amex companion voucher, avios and money.
I really wanted Business class but none available when booking.
Question …
Will they let me upgrade at the airport?

Thanks.

[Whatsthepoint]

Very unlikely, but not impossible. No harm in asking. It’s much more likely that you would get an ‘offer’ on ‘manage my booking’ a few days before, but still Unlikely on such a popular route.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

If there are any offers it will be for cash only and for several hundred quid.

And BA doesn’t always offer upgrades even if there is space in the cabin.

[SamG]

You won’t get an offer on MMB (or you’ll see the price but it won’t allow you to purchase due to it being an Avios booking)

I’d say pretty good chance of an airport upgrade being available- WT+ is very busy but there is space in Club (based on seat maps so only my theory!). But they may indeed not decide to offer them

Ask at check in and have your credit card ready !

[AndrewT]

You can get cash upgrades on reward bookings when the new system is working properly (ok I accept that is a long shot!)

Did it successfully Club » First to Seattle earlier this year.

[SamG]

Oh nice! I’ve had the offers a few times but it never works when I click through. I keep seeing an offer Male-London which I’d bite their hand off for but fails and call centre can’t do anything either

[saintsman1980]

@AndrewT – did you cash upgrade your booking when dropping bags? Or did an offer appear in MMB?

Just curious, as we have a Club world reward booking to Seattle next year.

[AndrewT]

Yes and No. It was a genuine POUG, however:
it appeared in the app, but did not work
it did not appear in Chrome or Firefox on my phone
it did not appear via my Chrome desktop browser
it did appear and worked via Firefox on my desktop

Like @SamG I have seen a couple of other cash upgrade offers on reward flights but until this one none have worked. As I said it’s a bit of a long shot, but is definitely possible.

[Aston100]

SamG wrote:

Oh nice! I’ve had the offers a few times but it never works when I click through. I keep seeing an offer Male-London which I’d bite their hand off for but fails and call centre can’t do anything either

This happened to me for London to Kuala Lumpur.
First seats available for a £400 upgrade through MMB.
Unable to complete the action over a period of 2 or 3 days.
Call centre unable to assist (including You First).

[bobthebuilder]

Aston100 wrote:

SamG wrote:

Oh nice! I’ve had the offers a few times but it never works when I click through. I keep seeing an offer Male-London which I’d bite their hand off for but fails and call centre can’t do anything either

This happened to me for London to Kuala Lumpur.
First seats available for a £400 upgrade through MMB.
Unable to complete the action over a period of 2 or 3 days.
Call centre unable to assist (including You First).

Had this as well, and turns out it was because we had used our Barclays upgrade voucher, so while the offer appeared on the app, our booking was ineligible.

[AndrewT]

I have no knowledge of what is right or wrong there, but I suspect you were being fobbed off with a default answer. My successful cash upgrade was on a Barclays voucher booking.