Originally Posted by lincolnjkc

Is it even remotely possible that there was a 'phantom' aircraft change? A few years ago I was...in a polite word...livid when my 20A exit row window mysteriously became a 21B exit row middle to the point that I asked many more agents than I probably should have if they had any way of telling what happened (Character fault: My parents taught me from an early age that 'that's just the way things are' and 'because I said so' aren't valid answers to a question). More agents than I would have expected were trying to be helpful and I wound up with a bunch of stumped agents until at one of the hubs I found a lead who was intimately familiar with SHARES through his long time at CO and who was more than a little bored at the time.

Several minutes of typing, a few "hmmms" and an an "aha" later it turned out that a few days before I noticed the seat change the aircraft type had changed from a 738 (20A and 21A exist) to a 73G (20A doesn't exist) and then a few hours later had been changed back to a 738... So the seating engine went "Oh, Mr. LincolnJKC is in a seat that doesn't exist! we must fix this!" and automatically moved me to a new seat (it seemed to be the "closest seat that actually exists and isn't otherwise occupied") but when the aircraft changed back since the seat I was still in was valid it didn't see fit to move me back and someone subsequently grabbed the now vacant 20A. Happy ending: 21A (or F...it was a while ago) opened up and I grabbed it as soon as I saw it.

Obviously 738->73G->738 isn't a major change but if you do something weirder (any narrowed to any widebody or VV, polarized/PP WB to non-polairzed/non-PP...and if there aren't many "open" seats to toss people into... strange things happen.

And no, the lead didn't have access to the transaction history/audit trail (I'd be shocked if any, let alone many, customer facing employees do) but this was more putting the pieces of what they did (and didn't) see in the PNR notes and flight history together.