On a recent flight I was very disappointed with how an upgrade situation was handled. I figured I'd put this out there to see what some of the veteran flyers think of this situation. I shot PM to CO Insider as well, but haven't heard back from him yet.

A friend and I (both have Gold Elite) were returning from DCA to AUS on CO359/CO1533. The first flight ended up being delayed almost an hour due ATC. This made the connect time in IAH extremely short (maybe 3 mins or so). Upon landing we checked the pda site to confirm the connecting gate and verify that our upgrades for the IAH-AUS leg had cleared. We had gotten 5A and 4B, excellent. We across Terminal E in a full sprint, boarding pass in hand and made it just barely in time. The GA took our BP (without scanning them) and when we asked for an updated BP showing the upgrades, she said no. It was basically go now, or don't get on the flight. We rushed down to the plane, and the FA helped get the carry-ons into the overhead bins (in F). We proceeded to sit down in our two empty F seats, but then the FA asked to see our boarding passes, clearly convinced we were not supposed to be there (see discussions of younger travelers not in business attire). We told her the GA did not have time to reprint them for us but we could show her the electronic version on the pda site. She refused and made us head into coach and "find an open seat". We decided not to start an argument since we were already delaying departure and didn't want to aggravate the situation. Of course since the upgrades had cleared we had lost the previously carefully chosen exit row seats and got stuck in random middle seats (very uncomfortable for me, since I have a large build). The flight departed with our two F seats still open.

Luckily this was a short flight, but we ended up annoyed that we had not gotten the upgrades that we were entitled to, especially being exhausted from a run across Terminal E.

I want to consider this a downgrade situation and feel things could have been handled better. I realize this was a bit of a special circumstance, but there was clearly evidence that the upgrades had cleared normally. I'm sure the passenger manifest showed us upgraded too, since as far as CO's computers were concerned we were assigned the F seats. It was obvious that noone else was claiming those seats.

I'm curious what all you experts out there think about this was handled and what you would have done differently. Also if you think some sort of compensation is warranted here.

As as aside, I think this also raises the question of what we would have done if we had gone the new paperless pda route -- how does one provide a BP if only a printed one is believed to be real?