Originally Posted by cblaisd

A few days ago I was ticketed to fly AAA-BBB on the 4pm flight.

At online check in, I put myself on the standby list for the 1pm flight.

At the 1pm flight's gate, the agent called me up but the only thing left was a middle seat in row 837 so I said that I would decline and keep my confirmed seat on the 4pm flight (and on which the iPhone app had consistently been showing me as #1 on the upgrade list with 5 F seats available. Nice)

In a snippy way, she said, okay, I'll go to the next person.

I then happened to again check the flight status for the 4pm flight only to discover that I'm not anywhere on the upgrade list. Hmmmm....

Went to RCC and a very nice and competent agent worked on this and discovered that the agent at the 1pm gate had in fact canceled the rest of my reservation! (Not just the 4pm flight, but the onward segments after that as well).

He was able to get the 4pm flight (and the rest of the ticket) reinstated and was able to get my exit row aisle seat back. BUT, now I'm #10 on the upgrade list.

I went back to the 1pm gate where they were just finalizing the flight to talk to the agent who'd somehow made this mess. She was not available but a VERY nice and competent Service Director spent about 30 minutes going over the record and was multiply apologetic for what had happened. She said that the gate agent "took a shortcut" and wasn't supposed to have done what she did.

She also said that there was no way (she tried several things) that she could do to get my #1 upgrade priority back.

Not the end of the world, but kind of frustrating and I'm interested to know what you suspect the 1pm gate agent did wrong -- or what I did wrong. In the past, I've always been told that if you decline a standby seat your original confirmed seat stays confirmed and your order on the upgrade list for that confirmed flight is unchanged.

Obviously neither was the case this time.