A Little Known Trick to a Free Upgrade on an Alaska Award Ticket

Even old hands like me occasionally learn new tricks. This is why it is worthwhile to experiment when searching for flights. Recently, my wife needed to make a flight with less than a week’s notice which made paying for it with cash extremely pricey. This is why it is always a good idea to keep a stash of miles (as opposed to “earn and burn”) for last minute trips since the number of miles stays the same even though the cash price rises dramatically as the flight date approaches. After getting her flight, my wife asked if we could apply one of our Gold Guest Upgrades to get her into first class. I replied “tut, tut, my dear, that’s not the way it works. You have to pay more miles to get into first class”. But I thought, hmm, what if…

Normally, you are going to search as shown below:

And get this result offering you economy or first:

But if you try selecting the elite upgrade selection on the search page (highlighted in blue):

You’ll get this result showing three columns:

Note the colored in “F” like you would see if you tried to use a Gold Guest Upgrade on a paid ticket. Select that flight in the middle column and you will get an instant upgrade to first without it costing you any more than the economy ticket in miles. This also put my wife on the upgrade list for the first leg of the flight and she was upgraded at the airport so ended up in first for both legs.

I know some will remark on the high cost of 50K for a one way award flight, but that is pretty normal on most airlines for a flight within the next week. At least flying in first should make it less painful and this method saved 20K in miles over just selecting a first class seat. Remember this next time you are booking an award on Alaska.