Don’t Do This if You Want an Upgrade

OPINION:

Dress up, they said. You’ll get an upgrade, they said. If you’ve ever been given advice on how to get bumped up from economy on a flight, you would have heard of this “hack”: dress for success.

The logic behind it being that if you dress like you should be flying at the pointy end of the plane, you’re more likely to get an upgrade. It’s something about maintaining the prestigious image of business class or first class, or not offending the paying passengers by wearing your comfy, albeit oversized, stained trackpants. But I’m calling BS.

This isn’t a hack. It’s absolute rubbish. And if you are silly enough to try it, it won’t land you in a better position — it will land you in a worse position than the already insufferable economy seat you started in. I know this because I have been silly enough to try it. More than once. I’ve tried dressing like a power business woman in a pencil skirt. I’ve tried dressing “smart casual” in my nicest pair of skinny jeans. The result? Zero per cent of the time I was upgraded, 100 per cent of the time I was left even more uncomfortable, and 50per cent of the time I’m certain the check-in worker rolled their eyes at my blatant attempt at trying to score a better seat.

In reality, all that will happen is you’ll spend the whole flight worrying about the lack of leg room in your skinny jeans causing deep vein thrombosis. In fact, none of my friends or family who have tried this so-called hack have ever been successful either, to my knowledge. It makes me wonder if it is just a bald-faced lie designed togive us plebs at the back of the plane a bit of hope. Of course, you could pack your comfy trackpants in your carry-on luggage and change when you inevitably don’t get an upgrade. But the fact remains — you wouldn’t have gotten an upgrade because this hack isn’t a hack at all.

But then again, you could also end up accidentally leaving your best pair of jeans on the plane after you changed, which did once happen to a friend of mine. Just save yourself the time and effort and wear your daggy tracksuitpants in the first place. And wear them with pride.