Understanding Upgrade Co-Pays and Airline Fare Codes

TravelSort reader Jeff writes: How much are United upgrade co-pays, and are they ever worth it?

Great question, at least for those of us who aren't top tier elites and so wouldn't have complimentary upgrade options. United probably takes the cake for having the most complex chart for upgrade co-pays, buried in the pdf that also contains the travel award chart. As you'd expect, the number of miles and amount of the co-pay varies by where you're traveling to. But it also depends on what type of fare your original ticket is–and we don't just mean discount economy–we mean the actual fare basis code.

Airline Fare Basis Codes

Airline fare basis codes begin with a letter, usually followed by an alpha-numeric code that specifies whether the fare is refundable, if there's a minimum stay, etc. The first letter usually denotes the booking class. While F is pretty much universal for First Class, J and C are typically full fare business and B and Y are full fare economy, there's some variation in the letters used for various discount business and economy sub-classes. Here's a chart with the common fare codes for American, Delta and United Airlines:

United Upgrade Co-Pays

Ok, back to the topic at hand: United Upgrade Co-Pays. Unless you enlarge the upgrade award chart, you'll be squinting at very small numbers, so here it is in sections, with the United miles and Upgrade co-pays required by booking class and by region:

While Jeff's question was about United upgrades, here's the American Airlines Upgrade chart as well:

As you can see in the United and American Upgrade Charts, only the full fare business and full fare economy fares do not have to pay a co-pay for upgrading; only miles. The discounted business and discounted economy fares have to redeem miles and pay a co-pay, as much as $600 each way. That would be $1200 roundtrip per person, which is starting to look like British Airways fuel surcharges–and that's on top of the miles required for the upgrade, and the fare itself.

• Find a discounted fare: Since upgrades are one class only, we'd have to buy a discounted business class ticket. If we're looking at the end of May, these tickets are about $5158, with a stopover each way. A direct flight would be even more: $8274.

• Check whether there is upgrade space available. While anyone with an ExpertFlyer subscription will want to use it for this, if you don't have a subscription you can use FlightStats: Go to “Flight Availability”  to check the seats available for each booking class. You'll still want to call the airline to confirm whether award availability is there (since award availability is capacity controlled) but at least you'll have a sense of how full the various classes are when trying to pick a flight, and before you call.

• After confirming upgrade availability, book the discounted fare and upgrade. You should be able to upgrade online using miles, which will help you avoid the phone booking fee, but you usually end up paying the co-pay at the airport