Imagine being upgraded from cattle class to the pointy end without paying a cent, just by using a magic two-word strategy.
New York Times best-selling author Tilly Bagshawe who flies around 100,000 miles a year often manages to get herself an upgrade by doing just that, according to Insider.
So what could these two words be? Any guesses?
“Revenue management”.
Sounds boring, doesn’t it?
But Revenue management is actually the department responsible for making sure a flight is profitable.
So here is Tilly’s strategy.
You call and ask the reservations agent: “Have revenue management released any first-class seats for miles upgrades yet?”
If they say no, ask them to check or just be put through to revenue management so you can ask when they will release some, as well as how many seats are left.
“Politely respond like this: ‘You have 20 seats unsold? Why aren’t you releasing them?’
Tilly Bagshaw
According to Tilly, by the end of the conversation they’ll usually say, “OK, we’ll release one for you”.
“Doing that, we’ve had a pretty much 100% success rate,” she said.
Insider asked Virgin if this was a legit strategy.
They said each year they release thousands of reward seats for their Flying Club members, and customers can check availability online and through their contact centre. WOW.
What a hack!
Oh and if you’re wondering which methods will definitely NOT get you an upgrade, we covered that last week.
- READ: The strangest methods used to try and sneak into Business Class
- READ: A new Golden Age in air travel is here for First Class flyers