I had a recent experience with a last minute class change and the time it took AS to process this simple change had me stressed.

I was looking to upgrade J to F HND-SFO. From ~60 days out I checked many times a day and watched with horror as the flight went from 6F down to 1F with about a week to go (actually went to 0F but then came back to 1F). I believe the seats were taken by JAL members using JL miles via waitlist since I never saw any space open up in the 60-7 day range. Sometime in the T-2 (day) range the last F seat became available to partners. I was going to use the online change tool to switch but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) it told me I could not do the change online and would have call in. The seat showed on the AS website but since this was a connection from an earlier flight I could not just snag it that way and had to call.

This was morning in Japan and the middle of the night in the US. 10 minutes on hold to get to a front line agent who decided she needed help from the partner desk but the partner desk was busy and another hold of 7-8 minutes ensued. Once connected to the partner desk the agent confirmed my intentions to upgrade from J to F and confirmed there was space available but after a minute said their main system was having issues and she could not process the request using that system. She said she might be able to process it manually using a backup system but she would have to get her manager's approval to use that method. After another couple of minute wait she came back and said the manager had given approval and she went about grabbing the space and processing and confirming the change which once she started went smoothly and was done in short order.

Why does it have to be so hard to make a simple change? In the end it worked out but it took me 30 minutes on the phone bouncing around on the AS roller coaster and all the while I was fearing someone else would grab that last seat before they could get their stuff together. I wish they could make their IT better so simple things like this would not take so long.