Avios, upgrades and reserved seating on the Delhi-London flight

I need to soon, it's gone 2 and I'd like to not lose all of tomorrow morning in bed (plus it would be good if I could try to move my sleep cycle round a bit ready for the early start on Monday, train is at 07:09 or something). Anyway.

Some desultory-ish progress on the Georgian lessons, have got up to lesson 9. Have read the PDF booklet that comes with the lessons and that has actually been a pretty useful recap, and I do feel a bit more confident I have more-or-less remembered what I have learned. Do need to try to exert myself a bit tomorrow and get through two or three new lessons if possible.

Suddenly wondered what my avios are worth. I have about 17.5k of the things (this must have been building up for years, quite possibly ten or fifteen years, since I have never spent any and I've been using the same credit card for ages once I couldn't get a decent cashback offer any more) and they are apparently enough to get me a one-way economy BA flight from London to Mexico City (as a somewhat arbitrary example; I'm not necessarily doing that flight, though I might) for a bit under £70+taxes, fees and carrier charges. Now I know the latter constitute very roughly half of the typical fare, so in return for spending thousands of pounds over ten or fifteen years I have a bonus of maybe £300-500 here, but I suppose it's better than nothing (and of course I got my 28 days interest free credit and extra consumer protection and enhanced credit rating thrown in free gratis and for nothing too).

Hmm, trying to quantify the actual cash value here I just tried to find a flight price for London-Mexico City on the BA website and although I could have sworn they did, they don't seem to have any direct flights. It seems to be £1114 for the cheapest economy fare via Madrid to pick up an Iberia flight. I don't know how much this says about the value of the avios.

It looks as if I could upgrade to World Traveller Plus on the Delhi-London flight (in theory; I have no idea if this would actually be available) for 12.5k avios. Having had a fiddle on the BA website - it still says I have to contact my travel agent - I cannot do this either for cash or avios, and ebookers don't seem to offer it to me either. I am not sure I would - thought it would depend on the cash equivalent value when used to purchase an economy ticket, if they were relatively valueless there but cheap for an upgrade I might spunk them away on an upgrade - but it would have been another way to quantify their cash equivalent value, but since it doesn't seem to be an option it doesn't help. I am a bit surprised there is no "pay an extra £n00 to upgrade to World Traveller Plus", I am sure I remember having that offered to me on my BA flight to Argentina the other year. Maybe it happens nearer the time. I'm not particularly desperate to upgrade; if I really felt like splashing cash around I could possibly pay £20 to reserve a seat and pick an emergency exit position. I'm just exploring the options here.

Having suddenly thought about that, I am a bit tempted to splurge the £20 to reserve an emergency exit seat. [I really should have thought this at the time I booked, although in reality I'm sure it would have made no difference. It's been so long since I did this kind of thing I'd forgotten all these little "tricks".] I half resent being charged for it (I would presumably be allowed to simply not complete the reservation if I didn't like the seats I could pick) but on the other hand it is unquestionably a superior seat and viewed as an upgrade £20 is pretty cheap. (I do wonder if they charge a flat £20 or more for emergency exit rows.)

WTF, let me at least see what's on offer. No, all the emergency exit seats have already gone, although it does look like they would be £20 if they were available. You can pay £30 to reserve a seat in a twin row (instead of a triple row as usual, or quadruple in the middle of the plane) but I don't think those seats are any wider or give you any extra leg room, so I don't see the value in paying an extra £10 to get one. I suppose if you're in the aisle seat it's one less person trying to get past you while you want to sleep, but frankly that doesn't really bother me much anyway, and in any case the Delhi-London flight is a daytime flight so the inconvenience of letting someone get out past me is even less significant.

So definitely not paying the £20 now. I might check in periodically on that reserve a seat page and see how the flight is filling up; if the paid reservations really mount up I might be compelled to pay to reserve an aisle seat while I still can, but my gut feeling is that won't be necessary.

Anyway, bed. Will look into the Delhi hotel tomorrow and hopefully prioritise other preparations like the Georgian lessons and memorising some PIN numbers for my lesser used debit/credit cards.