Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
I'm seeing too often flights/routes disappear that are full 95% of the time only to be told the company isn't making any money off of the route.
This is irrelevant and seems only included in your post to express bitterness that you feel the passengers have something to do with. But to address this point head on - the best thing you can do is to ensure your passengers, especially elite passengers, have the best possible experience on AA. The loyalty engendered by dozens of great flights with constant drink refills, good food and a warm smile can be killed off in an instant by a passenger not being given an upgrade they are entitled to.
Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
You can look through many pages here on FT how to jump the system and make it work to get miles/UPGs/refunds.
To get upgrades: FT goes into how to ensure your best chance of an upgrade over other customers. This has nothing to do with AA's bottom line.
To get miles: The ability to do a mileage run cements loyalty to the airline and drives future business. If I flew 90K EQM and couldn't mileage run, I would have far less incentive to fly AA for the 40K EQM above 50K. The price at which passengers buy their mileage run is the same price that revenue management would have sold that seat in that fare class on that routing on that day to any customer who wanted to buy it. The latter point is revenue neutral. If it adds an extra passenger to a plane, its revenue positive.
To get refunds: Widespread refund fraud? You're going to have to point me to this FT page as I'm unaware of it.
Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
You'd be surprised at how many times pax decline UPGs....even on 4+hr flights.
You're telling me that elite passengers who list for an upgrade frequently decline it? Sorry, I don't buy it. Does it happen on occasion? Yes, I said that above - people don't have enough stickers and didn't realize that in advance, traveling companions don't want to split but didn't have that indicated on the priority list, etc. But on a list with eleven upgraders, someone would have taken that seat. As the OP said - the GA did not attempt to find anyone.
Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
FAs are told many times NOT to get involved with the UPG process, only the Agents have that ability. As FAs, we don't have the means to 1) know how much a pax paid for a Y ticket, 2) how many miles are needed for the UPG, 3) what kind of discounted Y fare a pax is on, and can't be given an UPG, etc.
I fully understand this. There's a difference between pointing out that a seat is empty to the GAs and processing upgrades yourself. I expect AA FAs to do the former. When a GA ignores that, I would hope the FA would be part of the solution, not the problem and report the GA and/or encourage a complaining passenger to do the same.
Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
When I was working the trans-cons, many times during boarding (either at JFK/SFO/LAX) pax would board a plane, see an empty F/J cabin, and go off on the FAs because they were told by the agent that those seats would be full or have checked-in full.
Shame on the passengers here. They should have asked if the plane boarded full. That said, I wish GAs would realize that OLCI (in addition to the potential for misconnects) does not mean that a F/J cabin that has checked in full has boarded full.
Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
We as FAs try to tell the pax they are more than welcomed to go back out to the gate to check on their UPGs and find out what's going on, only to come back with their heads and tails between their legs because the UPG they were requesting was more than they were willing to pay, or they didn't have enough miles from the award tix they were already on.
Seemingly irrelevant here. We are talking about elite sticker upgrades. Elites know what these cost. Occasionally, someone may decline the upgrade because they didn't realize they didn't have the sufficient number of stickers but again, with eleven passengers on the list - that was not going to be a problem here.
Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
Too often, when we do ask ", what happened to that pax who came back out requesting his/her UPG?", we are told they didn't want to pay for the difference with either money, miles, or the fare they were on didn't allow it.
Again, irrelevant here. There are some stupid passengers but here we are talking about elite passengers who listed a domestic sticker upgrade. There are no fare class restrictions except award tickets. If the latter, they wouldn't have been listed.
Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
There are times when agents come down with an UPG for the next individual when they are getting ready to close the door and ask the FAs to find them as they want to close the door.
Which is a great time-efficient way to do their job processing an upgrade. The GA could have done that here. They didn't.
Originally Posted by
sluggoaafa
Again, not knowing the full scenario with this instance, we'll never know why this flight went out 15 of 16.
What we do know with 99.9999% certainty is that it shouldn't have happened.