zski1

Hi,

*UPDATE*

***I'm leaving my post up just in case anyone has this happen to them in the future, but about 30 minutes after checking in, I checked my reservation again and the entire trip is upgraded. I wonder if there was some glitch in the processing of the upgrades that caused the reservation details to disappear for at least 6 hours??*** Original post follows.


I searched through the old thread and this one, perhaps I missed my answer, but I'm flying tomorrow on a domestic leg followed by a transatlantic leg. I am on the waitlist for a SWU. EF shows no J seats for sale (there were at least 5 available yesterday, I suspect they got snapped up or perhaps there is something else going on that only revenue management can explain - coach is showing 7's across the board so it's not an overbooking situation) and C is naturally currently 0. There are at least 7 J seats available on the seatmap but I know that is not an accurate predictor of availability. I also set an EF alert to let me know if C inventory ever became C1 or more, and never received an alert.

My SWU request is for both the outbound and inbound transatlantic legs, both are on the waitlist, and both have requests for upgrades on the domestic attached segments currently contingent upon the transatlantic portions of the trip being upgraded. The return leg is from CDG and has also required authorization from me for AA to charge me for the French upgrade tax, contingent upon the upgrade actually happening. So there are a number of working parts to this upgrade request.

Sometime within a few minutes to an hour after I made the upgrade request I played around with my seats on AA.com -- had no problem accessing the reservation or the seating choices. When checking out EF this morning, I noticed a more desirable coach (MCE) seat became available and I wanted to change seats; I went to AA.com and while the reservation showed up in my list of reservations, I can't see the flights or subsequently the seating choices. I called reservations and they said there's nothing wrong with my reservation and that the upgrade is pending but has not gone through and they referred me to web services who said that this kind of thing is normal when waiting for a SWU. They also said I would not be able to check in on the web and I'd have to do it at the airport, unless I wanted to be transferred to another agent to have the SWU waitlist request removed from my reservation. Naturally I did not want the waitlist request removed.

It is now just under 24 hours in advance of my first flight and I went ahead and checked in, even though the web services agent said I wouldn't be able to do so.

Questions:
1) Is it normal for all the details of the reservation to disappear when using a SWU? In the past when I've been on the waitlist for mileage+copay upgrades, this never happened.

2) Did I screw anything up by checking in? Could I have inadvertently removed myself from the waitlist by doing so? The web services guy seemed to think I wouldn't be able to check in, but he was wrong. Or did I misunderstand him and perhaps he actually meant that if I checked in I would be removed from the waitlist? I've never heard that before so I don't think that's what he meant.

3) is there a possibility that the system actually tried to upgrade me but it's hung up somewhere? I would normally just trust the system but in the past (at least 3 times) I've noticed EF showing C1 but my waitlisted miles+$ upgrade didn't automatically happen, requiring that I call in to ask for it to be manually processed. It doesn't appear that this is the case in this instance but I wonder if something else is going on given the invisibility of my trip details. I also tried to email myself my itinerary and AA.com also spit out an error when I tried to do that.

I don't really want to call again and waste another agents time so I figured I'd see if anyone had experienced these issues before and see if anyone has advice about what exactly I should ask for if I do call again.

Thanks
-z