Can I upgrade from Economy to Business class? Sir, Why don't you go and f$%& yourself!!!

Great experience...another proof of why what is taught in the business school is such bullshit. You do all the classes on channel management and tons of other stuff but it never leaves the classroom and hits the road....at least for a lot of
airlines...definitely for Lufthansa!!!

I am going to travel for the first time with Lufthansa in a couple of hours and I am
already reeling with their stupidity. I bought an economy class ticket to Zurich and then found out that I can travel business on a company trip. So I call up Lufthansa and ask them how much money would it take to upgrade. They promptly refuse my offer to take more money and ask me to go and talk to the agent who issued the ticket( though she does tell me that there are 10 business class seats available). The agent is another masterpiece. She takes a day to return my call. When she finally calls back, she first makes me feel guilty( I am wondering if she is trying to remind me that choosing indulgence over sacrifice is so non-Indian!!) for trying to fly business and then tells me 3 hours later( after a lot of effort) that I will have to incur all kind of penalties to help Lufthansa earn more money. I think about it and then say No( Am I trying to spread sacrifice now? Well, talk about effects of bad company!!). I would rather travel economy then go through this torture.

Now I should have stopped but then again, I cannot believe this is happening. Someone somewhere surely would understand that I want to pay more money!! So I go to the counter and ask them for a upgrade. The Lufthansa rep tells me that I cannot pay money and get an upgrade. I will have to cancel my ticket and buy a full price business class( with the assumption that I am buying it 3 hours before the flight).

So I am beginning to wonder what the heck is going on. I am very irritated...the only logical reason I can think of is that there are very few people who pay cash to upgrade from economy to business and hence the system hasn't made a rule for such a case. But then, I also wonder if airlines can afford missing out on such exceptions considering that an international flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt would not earn more than 5000 dollars for Lufthansa(for domestic flights, on such long routes as LA to NY City the number is as low as 200 dollars!!). Well, talk about sacrifice all over the place...Lufthansa wants to sacrifice the money I want to give them and
they want me to sacrifice a more comfortable flight.No wonder, these airlines lose money all the time. In fact, I found out recently that airline industry in US has cumulatively lost money since deregulation in 70s!!

And by the way, what happened to channel management? Shouldn't a company try to push
business through direct channels or at least upgrade and earn more money from people who call up their customer service directly?