Anyone had any luck with this? i was hoping to buy economy tickets and upgrade to biz class (or perhaps premium economy on virgin). I suspect that I will have to pay more on the ticket but it could be worth it, in particular since my hubby-to-be is a bigger guy who wears a prosthetic arm...

i travel a lot for work so I have access to Continental and Virgin miles so I think I have a few options on Virgin and SA.

if I used an agent like Premier Tours would they be able to assist?

the other problem is that given the window of when these flights are typically available (330 days before departure) I might run into the dilemma that we don't have our full itinerary set but I'd think we could work around it if we have 330 days to get all the lodging set up. right?

thanks in advance!

We booked our honeymoon to South Africa using Premier Tours. However, they were unable to assist with our use of frequent flyer miles. We ended up just buying our airfare on our own and using our miles on Delta to upgrade. Delta charged us approx $1,000 more per coach ticket so that we could be eligible for the upgrade. In other words, we ended up buying the most expensive coach ticket that airline charged in order to upgrade to business class.

You usually have to take care of upgrades yourself. Premier Tours usually have some pretty good prices on SAA.
It can be pretty pricey getting a full fare and upgrading to next level of service. You might be better identifying how many miles are needed either for upgrades or award seats and figure out what is possible and make a plan from there.

Premier usually has great fares in coach, but since you prefer Biz, inquire as to what price they can get for you in this class and if these tickets qualify for FF mile accrual.

Then check how many FF miles are needed to upgrade with Continental or Virgin on a coach ticket and what price coach ticket.

Gotta compare to verify the cost benefit of each.

On our trip to Tanzania this year, one of our travelers wanted to do this. The coach class ticket she would have had to puchase for upgrade was about the same price as the Business class ticket that Born Free Safaris could get per their contract (NWA/KLM). She just bought the business class ticket and saved her miles. Find out the class of coach that you can upgrade from, then price it out. Like Sandi says, weigh the costs and benefits of each.

Yes, you can get your ff upgrade and then book your trip around it. I did, back when Delta was partnered with SAA (they aren't any more). But the other advice here was good, so see what your choices are.