Miles & Points allow you to explore the world and see it like never before – in luxury; you can also take trips for relatively cheap when using miles and points to offset the travel costs. The most popular miles and points redemption is using them for award flights – miles/points can also be used for other travel like hotels, cars, etc. – but that’s never a good value.
While booking award tickets outright using miles and points is their best use, sometimes it also makes sense to buy a cash/revenue ticket and then upgrade that to a premium cabin using miles/points. Sadly, the process is not as easy as you’d imagine – upgrading cash tickets to a premium cabin is actually more complicated than booking an award ticket directly. That’s because there are a ton of restrictions on what tickets can be upgraded and with what miles, which sometimes makes it not worth it – there are however occasions where it does make sense (for example, your company buys you a ticket for business travel in Economy and you’d rather fly in a premium cabin so you use your personal points for an upgrade).
upgrade your ticket to a higher class with miles
Fare Class Restrictions
The biggest challenge of upgrading a cash ticket to a premium cabin is whether or not your ticket is actually eligible to be upgraded – generally speaking, the cheapest tickets booked in the lowest fare classes are not upgradeable. Usually you have to purchase a mid-tier/flexible fare in the cabin you’re upgrading from – so that’s why the cheapest, non-refundable and non-changeable tickets are not generally eligible for upgrades. These include tickets like Basic Economy and Economy Light – when you go to buy a flight you are generally shown several different types of fares in the same class of service:
- Economy Light / Basic Economy
- Economy Regular (non-refundable and non-changeable)
- Economy Flex (changeable but non-refundable)
- Economy Fully Flex (refundable and changeable)
There may be more fare options, but those are generally the typical four fares – they range from the least expensive to the most expensive. Sometimes a flexible Economy fare costs more than a cheap, non-changeable Business fare. In order for your ticket to be eligible to be upgraded to a higher class, most of the time you have to book a fare above the Economy Light / Basic Economy fare.
Upgrading: “One-Class” Restriction
Another major aspect of upgrading your ticket to a higher travel cabin, which is entirely determined by the specific airline you are flying and the miles you are using to upgrade, is whether or not you can skip “over” an upgrade to Premium Economy. This only matters when you book an Economy Class ticket as most airlines have a policy of “one-class” upgrades – meaning that if an airline offers all four cabins:
- Economy Class
- Premium Economy Class
- Business Class
- First Class
and you book Economy Class, you might only be able to upgrade to Premium Economy Class and not to Business Class because of the “one-class” upgrade policy. Some airlines will let you skip over the upgrade to Premium Economy and upgrade from Economy to Business Class, but again, this all depends on the rules of the airline. If an airline doesn’t offer Premium Economy, you generally have nothing to worry about.
This policy only matters if you book an Economy Class ticket and want to upgrade to a higher cabin. If you book Premium Economy or Business Class, the upgrades almost always can be one-cabin only so in other words, you most likely won’t be able to upgrade from Premium Economy to First Class.
use miles for upgrading a cash ticket
Award Availability
On most airlines, the availability for upgrades is the same as the availability for award tickets. For example, if you book an award ticket on Lufthansa in Business Class, you will be booked in to the “I” fare class and Lufthansa also uses the “I” fare class for upgrade availability. That means if there is space in “I” class, you can either upgrade to Business Class (if you have an eligible ticket) or you can book a Business Class award ticket outright.
Some airlines have different availability space for upgrades and award tickets, so it is important to check with the airline you are flying and the frequent flyer miles you are using to upgrade your ticket. All of the aspects mentioned above should be checked prior to booking your initial cash ticket.
Amount of Miles Required for Upgrade
The amount of the miles required for your desired upgrade is determined by the frequent flyer program you are using to make the upgrade. If you have the most expensive, flexible fare booked, you can sometimes use miles from other airlines to upgrade your flight – for example, if you book an Economy “Y” fare (the most expensive ticket in Economy) on Lufthansa, you should be able to use Air Canada Aeroplan miles to upgrade this ticket into Lufthansa Business “I” class, as the two airlines are both Star Alliance members. If you book a flight on Lufthansa and you want to use Lufthansa miles to upgrade, you will have more fare classes that are eligible for upgrades, since you are using the airline’s own miles for an upgrade.
There are times when an upgrade to a higher class on a cash ticket costs almost the same as an outright award ticket on a given flight – so sometimes you might actually not be saving many (or any) miles if you book a cash ticket and want to upgrade it. This is why it is very important to check all of this information before booking your flight. Some airlines also make you pay a “co-pay” in addition to the miles required for an upgrade – at this point, the upgrade is probably not worth it at all when you factor in that you have to book a mid-tier fare, then pay a co-pay to upgrade, all in addition to the miles required.
check with your frequent flyer program for upgrade details
All in All: Upgrading with Miles
Upgrading cash/revenue tickets sometimes is a good value and sometimes isn’t – it all depends on the fare you book and the miles required for an upgrade. For most people, these actually won’t make much sense and you’re probably better off just booking an award ticket outright on your desired flight. It does make sense to upgrade a cash ticket if, for example, your company is buying you an Economy Class flight and you want to travel more comfortably using your personal miles – in this case, you aren’t actually paying for the cash ticket and rather only the upgrade, so it could make sense.
Upgrading cash/revenue tickets is not as simple as most people think due to all of these restrictions mentioned above. It is very important to check award availability, the miles required, and any additional fees prior to booking a revenue ticket and ideally you will want to upgrade your ticket while you are still within the 24h cancellation window so you have some flexibility in case something unexpected comes up while trying to process the upgrade.