Etihad Guest has added a new way to bid for upgrades to Business and First Class. It will now be possible to bid for an upgrade using your Etihad Guest Miles.
You can log into any upcoming Etihad booking to bid for an upgrade. For each individual flight in a reservation, you will see the option to place either a Cash or Miles bid. If you are placing bids on multiple flights in a single booking you can mix and match Cash and Miles bids. Successful miles bids will earn a 10% miles bonus on top of the miles earned from their original booking.
Economy Deal and Business Saver fares are not supposed to be eligible for upgrades. However, on all of my recent Etihad flights a ‘special offer’ to bid for an upgrade has arrived at some point. I have three Deal flights coming up over the next three months. All three are currently available to bid for an upgrade.
Upgrading flights with Etihad Guest Miles
Using miles to upgrade Etihad flights is usually a poor use of Etihad Guest Miles. There are a couple of reasons for this. The number of miles required to upgrade varies by fare type. In most cases, the number of miles required for an upgrade is not far off the cost of a straight forward redemption.
There is also no Miles Plus Cash Option to pay for upgrades. The Miles Plus Cash Option allows you to pay with fewer miles and make up the difference with cash. This makes straight redemptions better
Is bidding for an upgrade with Etihad Guest Miles worth it?
Bidding for an upgrade with miles really only make senses in one of two scenarios. The first is if you are getting a better deal than a standard upgrade by paying fewer mile. The second is if you have so many Etihad Guest Miles you do not care what sort of value you get for them.
So, can you get a better deal by bidding with miles? I have an upcoming Etihad flight to London Heathrow. It is an ‘Economy Deal’ booking but the usual ‘special offer’ email had arrived. The minimum number of miles required to bid for an upgrade this booking is 116,335 Guest Miles. The maximum is 166,665 Guest Miles.
That is terrible value any way you look at it. For that many miles, it would be possible to redeem at least two and up to four Guest Seats in Business to London. Of course, if this had been a Saver, Classic or Flex fare I assume fewer miles would be required to bid for an upgrade. However, it would need to be significantly less to be worthwhile.
Verdict
It is good to see Etihad offering a new way to bid and pay for upgrades. If you have a massive stash of Etihad Guest Miles that you do not know what to do with it may sense to use them for upgrades. However, for the vast majority of people, this is probably not a good use of your Etihad Guest Miles.