Very interesting compensation patterns
On the weekend before New Year's eve, our group of 3 in paid F was scheduled to fly ORD-MIA on a 767. Delay after delay was slowly announced. The aircraft ultimately went mechanical at MIA, and swapped to a 757 international configuration for the inbound flight, so the J cabin essentially went from 28 to 16 seats. The seat map on the 767 had only 2 empty seats the night before departure. The scheduled 6:30pm flight ORD- MIA ended up departing close to 11pm. We were booked on 3 separate reservations, via different booking channels, and got different compensation, even though our fare was the same $4xx for the one way flight. I wrote in an identical letter via the AA website about 2 weeks later, and this was what we ended up with:
Person 1: paid in full with amex plat. credited flight to JL. compensation: $275 AA evoucher
Person 2: used a $200 AA gift card, and paid the rest with credit card. credited to AA. compensation: 7500 AA miles
Person 3: booked on Citi's travel portal to use up some orphan TY points. credited to AA. compensation: 7500 AA miles
The other thing that was quite interesting for me was that very clearly there would not be enough J seats to accommodate all the J passengers on the original 767. All 3 of us (none with status) ended up keeping our J seats. I definitely heard a few people (at least one of them was EXP based on luggage tag) arguing with the gate agent that they were originally in paid biz and how did they end up in the back. Flight was definitely oversold, the gate agent was offering $1000 travel voucher for taking the flight the next day. But I was surprised that all 3 of us without status didn't get bumped to the back. I did check in all of us the night before, approximately T-23 hours. Anyone know if this was the determining factor?