Question about Viking Air

[Ladiewillow]

Being new to river cruising, we chose Viking air plus for our first river cruise in 2017.  Found a straight flight to Amsterdam from Houston and paid an additional 150 per person for that flight. Once I received the airline confirmation,  I was able to upgrade the flight to premium through United for 200 per person. We purchased another river cruise for 2020 and we paid for airplus. I've been working out flight info and called to compare pricing and route info. I wanted to upgrade to premium. I was told that it would be 1000 per person to upgrade. I was confused by this since the price difference from economy to premium economy (on website) was 125. When I booked the trip, we paid 699 pp for airfare. I was told that we would have to pay the difference on the airflight we wanted if it cost more. Every airflight that I found, was in Vikings scope and there wasn't a difference. But when I tried to upgrade it was over 999pp. I wondering if I have Viking do the economy booking and once I receive the airline confirmation try to upgrade. Will this work and I will not have to pay the 1000pp? Why is it 1000 pp to upgrade? I've asked airplus but am getting different answers. 

[mhb1757]

I am guessing you may have confused Premium economy with economy comfort (or something similar). True premium economy is a totally different fareclass with bigger seats multiple additional features in a separate cabin from the economy seats. That is what Viking is wanting $1k/pp more for. It typically costs about 2x a basic economy fare.

What you booked before on United for an additional $125 or so was the economy comfort product....  those are seats usually at the front of the economy cabin that have extra legroom, priority boarding and maybe a few other perks. But it’s basically an economy seat with extra legroom. That is a regular economy priced ticket with a paid upgrade usually around $100-150 per segment on a long haul flight. 

 

usually on long haul flights on US airlines flights that have a true premium economy cabin will not have an option for those less expensive economy comfort seats. Just depends on the aircraft that is used for the flight you are on. So if the flight you plan to book has a premium economy cabin (which I assume they do since Viking quoted you a price for those seats) then you would not be able to get an economy comfort type seat through the airline. 

You can check seat guru to look at the exact cabin configuration for the flight you want to make sure but I’m guessing this is what has happened based on the info you provided