Originally Posted by
Shareholder
The flight was overbooked so quite a few people were opup'd into WT+ and the paucity of IndioAsians in that cabin was quite evident...not to mention overhearing a number other Caucasian passengers noting "these are not the seats we booked" and who had no evident BA or OW status, not to mention noticing the person seated next to me was a BA Ruby, quite white, and opup'd. Not saying the agent wasn't correct about the priority of OW status accepted for priority boarding -- can't recall if all three colours are shown under the OW logo below the listing of other groups eligible for using the Fast Lane -- just that BA in my experience has shown evidence of preferencing Caucasians above other ethnicities.
BA does not upgrade based on status alone. It has a complicated algorithm to compute upgrades which tries to limit how many upgrades each passenger gets based on their purchase history and prior upgrade history. Basically the idea---so far as we understand from a few leaked powerpoint slides---is to give people a "chance to see" the higher cabin so that they buy it next time. It is not a reward for being a silver/gold/GGL/premier member.
So actually you will often see bronze and silver members get upgraded ahead of gold members, because goldies have likely already seen the inside of a J cabin and obviously didn't want to buy it. A friend of mine has a theory that he gets more upgrades as a gold WT+ flier by removing his frequent flier number from the booking---this strikes me as unlikely but who knows. I don't actually know if he has crunched the numbers yet. The upgrade tool can be overriden but I think it would raise eyebrows if at a major outstation every upgrade was manually overruled.
Originally Posted by
johnspenceruk
Curiously, I have so far always been offered priority boarding on AA.
You are looking at the telescope from the wrong end. This is a chart for the minimum oneworld benefits that would apply when travelling on other oneworld carriers, if you are an AA Gold/Exec/ExecPlat. It is
not a chart explaining what benefits AA gives to "foreign" oneworld status holders.