Seat Upgrades Can Be Big Part of Preflight Prep

Being a frequent flier has numerous benefits but none better than the ability to use miles to upgrade to business or first class.

Too bad it can be such a pain, if not impossible, to use miles earned on one airline for an upgrade on a partner carrier. But that may be changing.

Just how important are our upgrades?

“In a word, very,” said Tim Winship, editor and publisher of FrequentFlier.com.

“The importance really varies with the degree to which you are a genuine frequent flier. The more frequently you fly and the longer the flight, the more important upgrades become.”

With the growth of worldwide airline alliances, some of the longer flights that business travelers find themselves on these days are so-called code shares with alliance partners. Under such arrangements, you may be ticketed by one carrier but fly on another’s aircraft.

Or perhaps you just want to cash in the rewards of flying with one carrier when you travel on another in the same network.

Although the partner airlines make it fairly easy for customers to redeem frequent-flier miles, scoring an upgrade on an allied carrier is not so simple.

Of the three major airline networks, Star Alliance is the largest, with 16 carriers (18 by next month). Its members -- including United Airlines, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines -- carry 380 million passengers a year to 138 countries and 790 airports.

For frequent fliers in one airline’s program, some benefits transfer to partner carriers.

For example, because of my status as a United Mileage Plus premier executive, I qualify as a Star Alliance gold member. Whenever I fly Lufthansa, for example, I get many of the same privileges as elite members of the German carrier’s frequent-flier program, including priority boarding and priority waiting list for standby.

Additionally, any Mileage Plus member, regardless of status, can redeem miles for free travel on any Star Alliance carrier, though redemption rules vary.

But for arranging seat upgrades on Star Alliance, the record is mixed.

In September, the network instituted a system that allows upgrades among four of its member airlines -- Lufthansa, ANA of Japan, Austrian Airlines and Lot Polish Airlines. The alliance says it will have this system in place for all its member airlines by the first quarter of 2007.

Unfortunately, I had a difficult experience with Star Alliance’s old system in December, when I tried to upgrade using United miles for a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany. My efforts required a phone call to Lufthansa to buy an upgradeable ticket (some discounted tickets are not upgradeable) and then repeated calls to United’s Mileage Plus desk to see whether the upgrade went through.

I was issued paper certificates that I had to remember to take to the airport. I was told that if my upgrade was initially denied, no efforts would be made to honor it unless I called back. I was also told by a customer service representative that there was no waiting list and by another that there was.

I would have thrown in the towel in disgust had I not been planning to write this column on the subject. The good news is that my persistence paid off -- I was upgraded on both the outbound and inbound legs of my trip, which was nice because I had paid about $350 more for the flights just so I could upgrade.

The kinks in the Star system, I am told, are about to be worked out, thanks to new software that allows member airlines’ reservations systems to talk to one another.

SkyTeam -- an alliance of nine carriers, including Delta Air Lines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Air France -- also allows travelers to get upgrades when flying certain partners. But doing so, as with Star Alliance, can require patience and phone calls back and forth between airlines.

Keith Matthews of Manassas, Va., found out just how much patience was required when he wanted to help his mother upgrade on a Northwest flight using Continental OnePass miles.

“Northwest said there was availability, and to use Continental miles I had to call Continental after I ticketed” with Northwest, Matthews wrote in an e-mail. He called Continental, and the agent was a bit confused by his request at first. But after checking with a supervisor, the agent made the necessary arrangements.

But to get a seat assignment, Matthews had to call Northwest again.

It is a “quirky kind of system but works well if you know what you are doing,” Matthews said.

The OneWorld alliance -- whose eight members include American Airlines, British Airways and Qantas of Australia -- does not allow frequent fliers to redeem miles for upgrade awards on any of its airline alliance members, said spokesman Michael Blunt, nor does it have plans to do so.

For me, as a Mileage Plus premier executive, United is the big test I’m waiting for.

The carrier, No. 2 in the world behind American, is coy about exactly when Mileage Plus members can expect the new upgrade benefits, though it has an announcement on its website trumpeting the awards this year. United declined requests to speak on the record about its projected timetable. The best I could get was a “stay tuned” from spokeswoman Robin Urbanski.

I’ll be eager to give the new Star Alliance system a test to see whether it lives up to its billing.

*

James Gilden can be reached at james.gilden@latimes.com. Read his blog at www.latimes.com/dailytraveler.