Do you suffer from upgrade guilt when you fly in first class? You probably do — and if you don’t, you should.
The woman seated in the last row of first class on my previous flight did. As I boarded the aircraft, our eyes locked, and I smiled as I shuffled back to seat 25D.
She looked away. I could tell she felt sorry for me.
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It’s a six-hour flight from Honolulu to Phoenix, so when a US Airways agent offered Blair Fell an upgrade to first class for just $350, he jumped at the opportunity.
“The agent convinced me by saying, ‘Wouldn’t you like to lie back and sleep?” he remembers.
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If you have a driver’s license, chances are that you also have an amusing story about GPS directions.
Here’s mine: A few weeks ago, my family and I were driving from Cayucos, Calif., to Prescott, Ariz., when I noticed that the needle on the fuel gauge was pointing to “empty.” Not a problem, I thought. There must be plenty of service stations between here and Bakersfield.
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They were traveling from New York to Paris on an Air France Airbus A380, the famous double-decker superjumbo, and in premium economy class. “We were very excited,” he says.
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They follow a formula: Someone has given all of their business to a particular airline, but when they try to redeem their miles for a “free” ticket or an upgrade, they find it costs a lot more than they expected.
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Like a lot of other travelers, Tom Brollini was just looking for a bargain when he clicked on the Cruises Only website a few weeks ago.
And he thought he’d found one. The site offered several booking bonuses, including a one-category cabin upgrade.
“When I clicked on the price category, a popup said, “Book a category 8A cabin and get an 8K upgrade,” he remembers. ” When I proceeded to book the cabin, guess what? No upgrade.”
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When Barbara Baksa changed her United Airlines tickets, she assumed the upgrade to Economy Plus would transfer to the next flight. Wrong.
“I went round and round with the reservation agent, his supervisor, another customer service representative I was transferred to, and finally that representative’s supervisor,” she says. “I know, I know — I’ve read your column enough to know better than to bother with a phone call but I was really hoping to resolve the matter quickly.”
The representatives she spoke with were sympathetic, but unable to help. They said her only option was to request a refund of the original upgrade fee through United’s site. Her request was denied.
So now what?
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