Originally Posted by
wandertheglobe
I was on the HKG-DFW AA 126 12/15 and had a milage + copay upgrade request in, was fairly high on the list so thought the odds of clearing was pretty good. There were 51 on the upgrade list. In the end those that cleared (from the upgrade list on the AA app) were #1 and #'s 19-28, completing skipping #'s 2-18. I don't understand how this would ever occur, why bother publishing an upgrade list at all if it is not going to be used? What do you have to do, keep calling the AA desk and asking or checking in with the gate agent? I have politely inquired at the gate in the past and the agent typically would just say they are working on it or watch the list, so didn't do that this time. I had a good seat for the flight but was looking forward to the (very rare) upgrade opportunity. I just don't understand the logic used where most of the top 20 on the list are skipped. Will be interesting what AA says about it.
Follow up: I sent AA a message and was pretty impressed that not only did they answer fairly promptly but called me after I noted that they really didn't answer my question, which was more about how the list works rather than my unique situation (their first answer was a generic "why others were upgraded over you" response but my question was more about why they did not follow their list). Basically they said it is complicated but after looking closer at this flight there were probably some given the upgrade over others out of order but that is done at the gate. I did not ask the gate agent about my status on the upgrade list as I figure they have more important things to do than answer the same question from 50 passengers, especially when they have a list that is supposed to be what they point to when discussing upgrade order. I guess it does pay to be a squeaky wheel? Anyway, the AA customer rep was polite as was I and I appreciated their responding to my question. Being platinum I still will be on the bottom of the upgrade lists, considering I got 2 upgrades in 2018 and both were on small market, regional flights.