Just figured I’d ask a quick question here. Having flown to Japan before, I can recall how… Arduous the flight can be. As such, I was curious. Are we allowed to, out of our own pocket, upgrade our seating if we so choose? The extra leg room and space would probably allow me to actually catch some Z’s on a plane for the first time in my life. Lol.
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UK JETs aren’t I’m afraid, they’ve explicitly forbid it in one of our most recent emails
A couple days before my flight I was able to pick my seat, so my friend and I sat together. We got a whole row to ourselves (with some clever spacing) so he could lay down to sleep on our 11 hour flight. Idk about upgrading though.
Esid, I’d contact your embassy and ask.
Probably consulate specific. We weren’t allowed to choose our seats or change them. However, when we met up at the airport, we talked to each other about switching seats amongst ourselves. I sat beside some JETs who switched seats every few hours so everyone got a chance at the window and aisle seats.
I am not a great flyer and I was also worried about this, however, I actually thought it was one of the nicest flights I’ve been on (mine was JAL). Like many folks on this thread I also had a group who was totally happy to swap around seats with each other, and I think our flight attendants were relatively entertained by us because they gave us tiny little cups of Häagen-Dazs every few hours which definitely made the flight more bearable. Even if you can’t swap things up yourself, remember that you are in a group of relatively like-minded individuals flying to the same place for the same reason, and I think it would be highly likely that you will all want to do what you can to make it a good flight for the group. Have fun, I also stayed awake for all 13.5 hours of my flight but you know what I made some great friends and the hotel bed felt extra great when I got there.
We weren’t allowed to change ours, they were issued to us by the travel agency.
But my cohort had a pretty complete list of people in our discord group. Once seats dropped we swapped around (some people wanted aisles vs windows, etc). When you’re waiting at the airport you might be able to check with your group too.
My cohort changed seats and upgraded and didn’t get any complaints.
this wasn’t something we were allowed to do, as I remember a few people wanted to do this. But we lucked out since it was during covid pretty much each JET got a whole row to themself
Covid times here – We were allowed to upgrade out of pocket. Remember that if you upgrade, normally thats your BOE credit card. Anything you do that costs more than the flight (bags for me for example), then you will get a bill later on at your work.
Didn’t upgrade, but as soon as I got the flight details I checked the seating and changed my seats around with no issue.
It can be difficult to upgrade since you get checked in as a group.
My embassy advised that we are not allowed to upgrade. Please check with your travel agent first before upgrading.