Originally Posted by
donotblink
I'm hearing from an American Airlines Airport Ground Staff Employee I'm friends with that some new options have appeared in Qik when checking in passengers. There's a yellow message that appears on some itineraries where first class isn't fully booked and there's less people on the upgrade list than there are available seats, passengers can bid for a first class upgrade (i.e. offer an amount they would be willing to pay and AA could give those seats to the highest bidder). The massage says to look at notes added to the VCR, but apparently nothing appears there yet. Could be infrastructure that's being added to QiK that isn't fully live yet? Apparently there's nothing in Quick Reference regarding it. I was asked if I knew anything about it, and I don't. Hoping that if/when this gets fully implemented, it isn't used as a way to take upgrades away from elites.
Would seem that if the parts I bolded are true, it wouldn't have any effect on upgrades. This is something that lots of airlines do and have done for quite awhile, in fact Amex has many airlines they partner with to do something similar from what I've read in their emails though never tried it. I know that AS does this as does UA, though somewhat controversially with TODs and data points that suggest it has occurred despite upgrade requests. I'm guessing that AA finally found a COBOL dev to work this out for them and is just catching up, end of the day if they can get ancillary revenue for a seat that would otherwise be empty after all upgrades...it would be poor form to not do this.
ETA: you seem to have the inside line on a bunch of new policies...please do keep sharing
