I have had some decent luck lately shifting to a slightly earlier return flight when a meeting gets cancelled. I generally hop in an Uber and call on the way to the airport and the last two times I have confirmed onto the earlier flight and wven had the second segment upgrade into F while the EXP agents reissued.

Today I had an issue where i arrived in JFK very early from SEA due to tailwinds and had plenty of time to catch and earlier connection to DCA. I could see 5-7 seats still unassigned so thought i would try to get moved onto this, pretty confident that i would get one of those seats. The surly GA said she wouldn’t touch my ticket that i needed to wait in the general CS line or call AA. Of course I ran out of time in line, by the time I got up to an agent the doors were closing for the earlier flight and so all seats had been given away. I’m curious what the protocol here is. I’ve had GAs recognize that as an exp i am going to sail to the top of their list and agree to spend a few minutes rebooking me right then and there.