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Q. I have a ton of frequent flyer miles that I want to use to upgrade to first class. Is there any way to tell when an airline will release unsold first class seats and make them available for upgrade?

A. A really good tool that lets you check if economy class seats are available for upgrade in real time is Expertflyer.com. The site only works with select airlines, including Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air France, Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, Qantas, and Swiss (they used to cover United as well, but no longer). Monthly and annual membership is available starting at $4.99 per month. Armed with information about which flights have seats available for upgrade you can then book eligible economy fares and then cash in your miles. They'll also send you alerts to let you know when a seat becomes available for upgrade on flights you specify. We wish more airlines would cooperate with ExpertFlyer.

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If you already have an upgradable seat, and were told that there were no first class seats available with points at the time of purchase, keep calling the customer service number. The seats are awarded to platinum (highest level of miles flown) many days ahead of the flight, usually to gold (next highest) three days ahead and to silver (lowest premium level) anywhere from 24 hours to right before the flight. The names of the levels vary from airline to airline, but the idea's the same. Keep this in mind: airlines are more interested in keeping their frequent flyers happy than they are in having seats available for upgrading with miles. The exception is intercontinental and Hawaii flights. For those, there are NO automatic upgrades, and you have to buy the seats, or upgrade with miles. That said, I have NEVER had a problem doing it on intercontinental flights, I just kept calling. One trip, I was able to upgrade the outbound leg right away, and the return the day before the flight left. KEEP CALLING!

by mickisue on Friday, March 12, 2010

I'm planning a trip from DC to Cairo in November via Air France (stop in Paris) and want to upgrade seating on all legs. I only have united miles and american airline miles. Do you think they will permit the upgrade?

by mfk8 on Friday, September 25, 2009

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