If ITA Airways offers you this upgrade you should definitely NOT do it
A mini guide explaining how to upgrade to ITA AIrwyas before arriving at the airport
ITA Airways
SkyTeam
In recent days I flew from Genoa to Rome, round trip. A route that, unfortunately, is operated only by ITA and where the ticket often costs more than a flight to NY. A truly paradoxical situation when you think that sometimes it costs me less to fly from Nice than from Columbus.
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ITA sent me no less than 4 emails to convince me to upgrade to Superior class, or business class on domestic routes. A kind of premium cabin that, however, has never convinced me since it was launched (Alitalia had eliminated it for years). My first experience had been far from "superior", a situation that has not improved in subsequent years, and Where catering never reached its promises,and in the end the advantage is only to be seated in the first few rows.
Leaving aside the error in the email subject line: "Get an upgrade on your flight with 20 off!", my advice is to aim for the upgrade only on long haul or if you are lucky enough to fly on a route operated with the "baby flagship," namely the A321neo.
How the ITA Airways upgrade auction works.
The system is a evolution of the previous one since it is always provided by Plusgrade, a company specializing in these activities.
- There is a possibility of gaining passage to a higher class with the "Buy Now" button at a price almost double the minimum bid in the event of an auction. In this case you click, pay, and have the safe upgrade.
- There is the classic possibility of Doing the classic auction, with a minimum bid and a maximum bid. The nice thing that in this case the maximum bid was almost 40% higher than the buy it now value
Important things to know if you upgrade with ITA with this mode
What is important to know is that the spending and transaction is not handled by ITA Airways, so it will not count as spent on ITA Airways to get bonuses related to spending with the ITA Airways co-branded credit cards.
With the upgrade comes access to the Skypriority route. and you will have access to the lounge. However, the characteristics of the ticket do not change, so you will not have excess baggage; the Volare points accumulated will be those for the original ticket.
In the case of a flight with a stopover, the upgrade is on the single leg, so if you want to upgrade to the higher class on the whole route you have to go through the auction for both routes.
It makes sense to upgrade to travel better
The answer is yes, but not on a domestic flight. Superior class is not worth the investment required. At the end of the day, the only advantage is to be seated further forward and little or nothing extra, also because if you are flying on A220 and you are seated in the left side, where there are only two seats, you will not have the next seat free.
In conclusion
Making upgrades on a 50-minute flight is a nonsense, at least that's how I think of it. That said, ITA Airways' upgrade system is functional and easy to understand, you certainly don't have the certainty of being able to do it because in this case the company always just sells the unsold. Have you ever used it?
