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How I successfully bid on an Ethiopian Airlines Business Class upgrade
Ethiopian Airlines operates a 787 in and out of Dublin with their new business class. It’s a great route that can be used to access Europe as it avoids a ton of taxes (boring) and fees (boooorrrring) that get tacked on to award tickets when flying through the UK or even France. What’s even better, is Ethiopian runs a buy up program for business class, or as they call it, CloudNine, prior to the flight. This creates an interesting value proposition when deciding whether to use points or just pay outright. In this situation, business class wasn’t an option with points, and coach was very affordable so I thought I’d give Ethiopian’s bid to upgrade program a go for a trip I’m handling for a loved one. Here’s how I successfully bid on an Ethiopian Airlines Business Class upgrade and saved over $2000. BYAH!
Here’s the cash rates for the flights. As you can see $620 vs $3500
and the earn rate based on fare bucket if you were to credit to Singapore Airlines…which I typically do now.
The main factor affecting your bid to upgrade will be load. How full is the cabin? I use Expertflyer to check
Economy is on the left and business on the right. As you can see – it’s WIDE open.
Cabin is wide open so assuming the fare qualifies…I’d guess there’s a good chance of bidding and winning. They have a site setup for bids.
If your flight is eligible for upgrade you’ll see this:
The offers are given a sliding scale of strength. In this situation the scale was from $600 to $900. In most situations I’d recommend plopping a bid right down the middle, but there wasn’t a big financial difference between down the middle and strong. I wasn’t willing to lose an upgrade over $50 – $75 so I made a strong bid.
$775 isn’t cheap. But in total…that’s less than $1400 for a one way, close to flying, business class seat. That’s not terrible and it’s over $2000 cheaper than the discount business at $3500
Less than 24 hours later I received a confirmation email. Yeahya!
In the end…I was able to book a revenue fare, earn some miles, and fly business for a fraction of the cost because of strategy and knowing some options. Hope this helps. BYAH!
*main photo is from Ethiopian’s Facebook page
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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