Originally Posted by
underattack
Flying to SIN today, I only had a 45 minute layover in ATL. Doable, but not great. I went to the airport early to get on an earlier flight to ATL. This is an M ticket that was actually upgraded "all the way".
I explained to the (very friendly) checkin person that I would like to get on an earlier flight to ATL. She told me that there are seats but she didn't exactly know how to deal with it given the international itinerary. She called someone (Atlanta?) and after quite a bit of hold time told me that she could only put me on standby even though there are plenty of seats (of course, I expect to be on the earlier flight so it is not a big deal. #6 out of 8 on the upgrade list right now, and 13 or so open seats.
Is this a new policy? She told me to get SDC would have been $250. I am Platinum SM, but have done similar changes as recent as a couple months ago. You would think they are happy to have me on my way vs. having me miss a connection due to some hickup with weather, mechanical or whatever.
I had absolutely NO PROBLEM changing my domestic outbound legs on my intl itinerary. You just have to have someone at the airport who knows what they are doing. The first person did a similar standby thing which I didn't like so I found a person I knew could do anything (she's top notch) and she balked at what the first person did and had it fixed in two seconds with me waitlisted for first (V=0 but F=9 so knew that wasn't an issue) and already in first on the second leg (V>0 as T-time>3hrs).
She said to ask for a supervisor if it happened again because it should have been an easy thing to do. I'm a PM...dunno if that makes a difference but really she made it happen just like it was any other SDC.