To upgrade or not to upgrade?

So I'm just preparing for my trip to London via Shanghai, with a side trip to Lisbon as well, when I am in Europe. And I got an email from Air New Zealand asking me whether I wanted to consider an upgrade on my Auckland to Shanghai leg and return as well. Those are the Air New Zealand segments that I'm taking, the rest of my flights are going to be with British Airways, which I booked via a lot of Avios that have got stored up, but that will be another story.

SkyCouch is calling

Anyway, back to the upgrade situation. I'm not normally one big on upgrading, but I do get recognition upgrades for my Gold status through Air New Zealand, and I get two of those per year that I can use, but I can't use them for anybody else who I'm travelling with, they are just personal. For me to be able to upgrade other people, I would need to be Air New Zealand Gold Elite, and I don't fly anywhere near enough to do that.

What you can do is you can bid an amount of money to get an upgrade. What you're invited to do is to consider whether you want to bid to upgrade to Premium Economy, or you can forego that option and bid to upgrade your economy seat to a SkyCouch, which is still one of the few kind of lie flat options that you can get in economy on any world airline. There are a couple others, but this is a really good one.

Now, I have had the opportunity to sit in a SkyCouch seat, which is essentially a row of three on either side of the wide body 787. So not the middle, but dedicated 3-seaters on either the left-hand side or the right-hand side of the configuration of three seats. What's really appealing about bidding for a SkyCouch is you get a whole row to yourself for when you're awake, and then when it's time to go to sleep, and it is an evening flight, then you get a mattress topper for the seats where the leg rests can come up to horizontal. So you get a nice wide platform, although it's not particularly long. You will have to sleep in a curled-up position, and you get a better blanket as well and a couple of pillows. You can make yourself a nice little nest for working in the morning when you wake up, as well as trying to get a good seven-hour sleep as well.

I find it difficult to sleep in a seated position for anything more than three or four hours, and that's on a good flight. So I put in the lowest possible amount of money that I can, which was $220 New Zealand dollars, in order to request an upgrade. Now I don't think I'm going to get it, even though my bid will be uprated by 30% through having Gold Status. The Air NZ rating of my bid was “very poor”. So I don't think I'm going to get it. However, there is still a possibility that I might get a row to myself because it looks like a pretty underweighted plane. It doesn't look like there's many people who have taken up the option to reserve a seat on my flight yet.

Air New Zealand has rivals

Now that may be because Air New Zealand has now got a lot of competition with Chinese airlines returning.

On their New Zealand routes, Air New Zealand having many more competitors on those New Zealand to China routes now. So I might luck out and just get a row to myself anyway, but I won't get the extra mattress amenities that will enable me to get an extra perhaps three to four hours sleep.

Here's the interesting equation then: is it worth £220 New Zealand dollars for me to get those extra three to four hours sleep, as well as securing that whole row for the whole flight, and also perhaps even doing a couple of hours work in a kind of nice position with my new M3 MacBook Air laptop?

I have fallen on the side of putting a bid in, not being too hopeful about getting it. But if I do, I'd be pretty pleased with that, and I'll make a video about the whole process and the experience as well.