Originally Posted by
YuropFlyer
I think the fact that they were US-Americans actually plays a bit into the "but I should get an upgrade" argument, since the US domestic system still works in that - in my eyes rather silly - way, that frequent flyers are getting upgraded for free if there are seats available. But that's something very, very much us-specific, and definitely shouldn't find it's way into international travel since it basically dilutes C/F class massively.
Is there a chance that they set about to Game the system from the outset?
They insisted that they were veteran frequent flyers who know better than you how things are done. As such, they would have been aware of the numerous instances where Premium Economy pax get bumped into better seats when planes are swapped with different class configurations.
Lots of airlines do this and there are threads running through the whole of Flyertalk discussing this with advice on how to exploit and/or maximise this potential for a cheap upgrade.
The only reason I see for the continued and ongoing protests from actual savvy flyers (and your account doesn’t actually rule out that they are not frequent flyers, in fact it supports the claim) is that they saw that the flight had been swapped (or could be swapped) to an aircraft without Premium Economy and when they realised that they could still pay for it, thought that they had stumbled onto a way to bag an upgrade. It was actually a no-risk gamble since they were entitled to a refund.
Instead of high fiving themselves for having gotten themselves the best Economy seats in the plane (with the only real “cost” being the administration hassles in getting their money refunded) they focused solely on not having achieved their goal of Business Class and blamed the crew rather than their approach, which they then doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled down on. Easier to do this than have a massive fight where they blame each other - which is probably where all that ugly and continued energy was coming from.