jlisi984

So here I am sitting at the gate in YYZ. I really dislike the last US departures of the day, because they're almost always delayed, lounge is closed, and no food available. But hey, sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

After getting through security today with an SSSS, I go to the lounge for a few minutes and then to the gate 45 minutes before. Nobody there. 30 minutes before crew arrives and goes down jet bridge (still no GA). A few minutes later, they're back up - no aircraft. Now we're at 20 minutes to departure, still no GA. No delay posted, obviously, either. Suddenly, 15 minutes to departure a gate change is made from F65 to F60, and everybody runs over. The screen shows LGA, but the gate agent insists they're boarding EWR (which indeed they are). Of course EWR departs 21:00 and LGA is at 20:55 (no delay posted still) so that's why EWR is off the screen... called concierge and they also didn't know what was going on. A few minutes later, concierge emailed me back and told me that the flight was delayed until 22:25 due to late arrival from Houston (the flight from Houston was actually perfectly on time, so obviously a swap with some other flight).

Finally, when the gate agents show up, I make a beeline. I knew that there had been W&B shifts since I noted the flight dropped from J5 to J0 (with corresponding increase in Y) upon closing. The gate agent has tons of boarding passes printed out, but looks at me confused. "What do you mean?" ... "Oh, yes, we've processed the upgrades but you're in the right seat, exactly where I need you." I looked at her completely incredulous and she continued... "but I will change it for you." Had I not been looking like a hawk at the gate, boarding passes would have been handed out and Zone 4 pax would have been in J, with me in Y. I noted she had the onload list printed, and I was right there on the top, the only status pax (Saturday evening in summer, no surprise). But she didn't take it upon her to spend the three extra keystrokes she needed to move me into J and some other pax into my seat (12F, BTW).

This is probably the case of a bad apple GA… to illustrate my point, she hand-wrote on every BP “comp. upgrade” and gave the FA a special manifest with a list of “comp upgrades” - as if ML*1 doesn’t suffice… especially since the entire J cabin was op-ups. You heard me. (To give credit where it is due, the FA was great, and service was as it should be, without any quality issues and in fact she was kinder than usual.)

To add some zest to the story, after boarding is complete, the SD has to ask everybody in row 12 to move back past row 23 for W&B… I would have been absolutely incensed if I were sitting in row 12, told to move past row 23, and had seen the op-ups into business.

Ultimately, it worked out fine, and in my favour (I'm still thankful for my J seat, of course), but with the many things that AC does wrong, it just seems that they can never do anything right. And in many ways, it's true. One would think that on the (rather rare) occasion where an op-up is necessary and merited, as a S100K the least they could do would be to show me they care. But they don't.

So, AC apologists, what do you say to this?