Originally Posted by
Raymoland
Looking for guidance on this situation. Booked paid first PLS-CLT-SEA April 17th. Inbound CLT-PLS was delayed making the connection to SEA in CLT impossible. Offered rebooking on the website. Only able to get PLS-MIA-SEA on April 18th in Economy, which we took. Have MCE seats, waitlisted for upgrade but as a Gold, don't expect to clear. Assuming we sit in coach, are we entitled to ask for compensation as we were originally in paid F. DId we screw the pooch by voluntarily rebooking economy? Thanks in advance!
First, you need to talk to someone, probably at the gate, and make sure you are waitlisted for an upgrade correctly, not just based on your status, but as someone who paid for first and is only in coach because of IRROPS, hopefully someone can chime in with the correct "code" they need to use. If you end up going in coach, you're not due compensation, but the difference in fare between F and Y: the issue here is that AA uses a horrible formula to figure this out based on the difference between what you paid and the price of Y at the time of flight which is usually absurd, be prepared to be insulted. You can also write customer service and complain about the delay and ensuing downgrade and might end up with a few miles thrown your way as a goodwill gesture. This scenario is the one which upsets me most about AA: you buy F and you MIGHT end up flying F, usually because seats in the new flights have been given out as upgrades too early.
