Can I buy an upgrade for someone else?

[addler]

My dear friend is flying back to the states next week. She’s 30 weeks pregnant and I know is really dreading the flight. Money is quite tight at the moment- she managed to stretch to premium economy but can’t justify paying for business when she has a baby on the way.

I know at the airport they often ask if you’d like to upgrade for £600 or so. My questions are:

does anybody know if business is worth it over premium economy when heavily pregnant?

And

if I can pay for her to upgrade, but as a surprise?

It depends, in part, on who she’s flying with. So Virgin, for example, business is significantly nicer. Someone like Icelandair there is very little difference

She’s flying with Singapore Air. I know their business has lie-flat bed but I wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse when that far along seeing as sleeping is a lost cause by 30 weeks anyway...

You would need all her booking details to buy it, but yes, you could ring them up and ask to purchase an upgrade for her.

I wouldn't leave it as a complete surprise for her, though, as she would miss out on some of the other benefits like a bigger luggage allowance and a dedicated check in line.

And if there was some mix up for any reason, she wouldn't know that you had paid for the upgrade that she didn't get until afterwards, when you would be trying to get a refund out of the airline (not easy!)

Probably not. I tried to do this for my DPs and the airline (Virgin) told me that people not named on the booking are not allowed to make changes. Understandable really as otherwise people could cancel/change flights maliciously but it was a shame since my intentions were good.

Can you be my friend?

Hmm could go either way then. I think I’ll contact the airline and see what they say. She was hoping they might take pity on her and offer an upgrade when they saw her waddling about but I don’t think the chances are very high of that happening!

Acorns ha, well she’s been there for me in the past when I’ve had struggle, and I’m fortunate that I’m now in a job where I have more disposable income. The situation she’s in isn’t pleasant in any way, so I just thought was there anything I could do to make the journey a little bit easier for her.

Your friend would have more chance of being upgraded if she has frequent flier status like Silver membership for instance (they are part of the Star Alliance grouping of airlines). She may well not be upgraded at the airport even if she offers cash (those days have long since gone) as priority for upgrading on the day if it happens is usually given to their gold and or silver scheme members.

Singapore actually encourage pax to bid online for an upgrade in advance of their flight. However, this is only from economy class to Premium economy.

Singapore were not very helpful when I was after an upgrade for DH to business where I was sitting. I very politely asked if there was any possibility we could sit together and got a sarky 'yes, we can downgrade you to coach' response.