Originally Posted by
canadiancow
On AC?
In my 627 J and 33 F flights, all but one of which occurred after becoming an FTer and actually paying attention to this stuff, I have seen it happen twice. Once into F on an (obviously) different airline. And once into J on AC. Bearing in mind that the vast vast vast majority of those 627 J flights (I don't have those stats, but definitely over 500, probably 550) were on AC.
Yes, I am only talking about AC.
It’s quite discreet most of the time, but if you pay some attention, it’s not hard to figure out either.
The chance of SD upgrading a complete stranger is quite low, but if that does happen, there is generally a noticeable conversation about why passenger asking for such upgrade or why crew offering such upgrade.
It’s more likely that the crew already knew the passenger. In this case it’s much easier to notice as there are likely gonna be multiple interactions that don’t quite resemble the normal interactions between the passenger and crew.
On another note, I am not sure if it’s indeed the policy that SD can be fired for “randomly” upgrading a passenger, or what’s considered as “random”, or if this policy has been around for long, as I have seen multiple instances of crew members, not just SD, quite openly upgraded passengers based on status, after the door closed. That was back in 2012-2015 BTW.