Dress Nice – You’ll Get an Upgrade 👀

TikTok and Instagram are full of travel advice. Unfortunately, great content isn’t always great advice. Flight Attendants and Gate agents are prohibited from giving discretionary upgrades, it is seen as stealing – they must only upgrade based on status or fare class. They will get fired. Strangely, A lot of the content involves influencing flight attendants, where the gate agent is really in charge of where people sit. It’s confusing because there is legitimate advice to be found, but this is not it:

Free upgrades are really about understanding capacity and having status. I’m at a 50% upgrade rate for domestic legs and 100% international in 2024. It has nothing to do with my swagger, style or good looks.

One Mile at a Time gives some clues on the origins of this myth. If you want to move from an economy seat to an empty emergency exit seat in economy (which is not an upgrade but a better situation), dressing nice still isn’t the solution. Being nice to the flight attendants (which you should do anyway) could work.