FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Your Operational Upgrades Experience 2018 - Please Post Here
Old Aug 26, 2018, 7:43 pm
  #55  
singaporeair
 
Join Date: May 2013
Programs: SQ Gold; QF Gold; QR Gold; VA Gold; QH First; Accor Gold; IHG Gold; Hilton Gold; Shangri-la Jade
Posts: 3
Originally Posted by Hitch22
If this posting delights the many gold’s out there... you’re welcome! 😉

Recently on a CDG-DXB (A380) in Y (sadly my default location), as passengers boarded it appeared there was an over-allocation in Y by one (passenger list was apparently incorrect).

I was on the front exit row and listened to a full conversation between purser and the section supervisor - as there was two seats available in J, the purser said she will be upgrading one passenger to balance things in Y. The supervisor asked who and the purser gave the seat number of the lucky recipient (row behind me), stated his name, followed by “Gold”. I caught sight of the passengers gold status on his ticket as he gleefully gathered his luggage and relocated upstairs.

Let me be clear, I’m not disgruntled and certainly won’t lose any sleep over this as I believe if you pay for Y you get Y etc, but I am curious on the current criteria for op-ups as I am Platinum, was on a Flex-Plus ticket, travelling alone, sat in exit row. I’m taking a wild, wild guess that it may have been my exit row seat that prevented what would have been a most welcome promotion?

I’ve further noticed that in 9 months as Platinum I have not had a single op-up compared to a previous near 30-40% hit-rate as gold. I typically fly on EK 4-8 times a month and several of those have been full (in Y at least).

Any explainable insight on current policy? Was this just one of those days when the upgrade fairies were having a bad day or am I somehow “blacklisted”? 🤷🏻.♂️
As you may be aware, the UPGR policy is purely based on fare class now (excluding EK Platinum). People think that travel history and patterns, tier miles, overall loyalty etc. have an impact, but they don't. The system generates a priority list based on fare class only. This is a relatively common situation, where boarding goes ahead on an oversold flight, but maybe a seat is INOP or there is some other issue that arises last minute. Generally, they will then locate the next person on the UPGR list and manually upgrade. This was most likely what happened!
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