how to use rewards for upgrades

Old Sep 10th, 2017, 02:24 AM
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how to use rewards for upgrades

My friend and I want to book a trip to Portugal on TAP. On their site they have several different levels of tickets (economy, basic, plus, etc. - all for coach) . My friend has a friend who offered to upgrade us to business class using his credit cards points (he apparently has tons of them) but says that will only work if seats are 'eligible'. On the TAP site it talks about upgrading but only talks about using the airlines own points. How can I find out if you can use some other credit card to do that?
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Old Sep 10th, 2017, 04:23 AM
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Every airline program is different, and I'm not familiar with TAP's, but speaking generally you can NOT use other airlines' points to upgrade seats from one class to the next, even if your points are with an airline that happens to be a partner with the one you're flying. For example, TAP is a member of Star Alliance, meaning they're partners with the likes of United, Lufthansa, Air Canada and several others.

If you have points on one of those partner airlines, you can use them for outright awards on TAP - meaning the whole trip - but not upgrades on a ticket you've bought from TAP. If you have TAP miles you can, but only according to the upgrade rules TAP uses.

Those upgrade rules vary quite a lot from one airline to the next, but in general you can use miles or points to upgrade seats bought in certain fare classes, usually not the cheapest. For example, when you look at detailed fare tables, you'll see numerous fare codes for economy seats. These will go up from super-cheap to super-expensive; the differences lie in the "fine print" regarding penalties for changes, advance purchase requirements, refundability, etc.

Typically (and I don't know TAP but would bet) the cheapest coach fares don't qualify for upgrades using (TAP) miles. Only more expensive fares will qualify, but when you add the cost of the underlying ticket to the value of the miles (and often a "co-pay" on top of the miles) it's often the case that you're better off buying a business class or premium economy ticket in the first place, and saving the miles for an outright award.

Some credit cards allow you to transfer the card points to some airline's frequent flyer program, in which case you can then use them for any purpose allowed by that airline program. For example, if your friends credit card points can be transferred to TAP's program, then he/she could use them to upgrade your tickets IF the ticket is already in the right fare class. Otherwise, it's probably a pointless exercise.

And of course the airline has to make seats available for awards or upgrades. Often they're reluctant to do this because they'd rather hold the seat for sale until they're positive it won't be sold, often days before the actual flight. The airlines have very sophisticated computer models to tell them when it's okay to release the seats for upgrades or awards, and trying to second-guess them is a fool's game.

This probably isn't what you wanted to hear, but that's the way it works.
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Old Sep 10th, 2017, 12:04 PM
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One other point - if your grind has "points" with a credit card like Capital One you actually use those points to purchase tickets in any fare class on any airline. For example if you friend has 100,000 points you could purchase a ticket that costs $1,000.

Also, if his points are with an airline affinity card you have to realize you can usually only upgrade 1 fare class - for example from Premium Ecomomy to Business Class rather than from basic Ecomomy to Business Class or First Class.

So, first you have to find out what type of "points" your friend has.
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Old Sep 11th, 2017, 01:26 AM
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Thanks for the info. This will help me research the situation better.
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Old Sep 20th, 2017, 10:01 PM
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>

That's been my experience.
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