A free upgrade to business class is something, almost everyone dreams of before boarding a crowded flight. But it never happens by accident.

What can you do to increase your chances of getting an upgrade?

For that let’s understand why do free upgrades happen?

Airlines need profit. Yet they upgrade for free (involuntary upgrades) when they could have sold for a much higher price. Why? Because:-

• Overbooking: Flights overbook in the economy class when the demand of business class is weak. Then they upgrade some economy class to best business class to Melbourne, (say) to save some extra revenue.

• Aircraft change: Different aircrafts have different configurations. So if the new aircraft has smaller economy cabin but a larger business cabin (while changing aircraft due to stopover/layover); there’s an upgrade to some passengers.

• Operations disruptions: If passengers miss their flight due to operational disruption of the airlines, they’re placed into another aircraft. If that carrier has only business class seats available then it’s an involuntary upgrade to best business class to Brisbane (for example)

Let’s now find out who’s the lucky one, who gets picked for a free upgrade?It’s you who is a:

• Frequent flyer: Airlines gift their loyal passengers with free upgrades to best business class to Houston. Chances are decided by higher membership tier.

• Airline staff: Staff is motivated by being upgraded whenever there’s an opportunity.

• Future high valued passenger: Airlines evaluate “good potential” of a client through their travel history and upgrade these passengers to best business class to Ko Samui.

If you don’t fulfil these criteria, all hope isn’t lost. You can still improve (prevent disqualification) your chances by:

• Dressing well:Follow the dress code specified for first/business class in their websites.

• Good behaviour: There are examples when politeness to the staff paid off.

• Volunteer to be rebooked: Airlines often offer upgrades as service recovery when they are at fault. Suppose a flights is heavily overbooked and if you volunteer to get off the flight, then you can get an upgrade as a compensation.

• Complaints: In some scenarios, airlines give upgrades when handling a complaint. This is subject to the airline’s policies and can deviate quite a lot across different airlines. It’s certainly far from a sure thing, but in some cases, a well-expressed (and reasonable) complaint may work out in your favour.

• Similar looks: This factor is most interesting. A person, at one point in his life, bore a striking resemblance to Richard Branson- the CEO of Virgin. Every time he flew on Virgin he would get upgraded.

Clearly they knew he wasn’t Richard; so we can only assume the airlines were sufficiently worried that someone would think they seat their CEO in economy; that they decided to avoid it.

Of course, you can always pay for an upgrade or book business class directly, but that kind of misses the point. You’ll only get that excitement and element of surprise with an involuntary upgrade. Plus, you may not want to shell out the cash to buy a business class ticket.

Good luck getting that upgrade!