I have a family member who was traveling HNL-LAX-DFW-xxx this morning (where xxx is a small Midwest airport with limited daily flights). He is EP and was traveling on a paid coach ticket, with both segments upgraded to J (both flights were on A321s with 5 J rows/20 J seats). His overnight redeye arrived at LAX at 6:19 AM (6:05 AM scheduled arrival). His ongoing flight to DFW was scheduled to depart at 7:00 AM.

At T-41m on arrival, his J seat assignment still seemed to be intact, and he had both a mobile boarding pass screenshot and paper boarding pass that had been printed in HNL. He says he arrived at the connecting gate for LAX-DFW between T-35 and T-30. Boarding had just begun, but when he attempted to board, there was a beep when his boarding pass was scanned, and he was told he was not checked in for the flight. They apparently then said they had fixed the situation and allowed him to board. However, when he arrived at his previously assigned seat in row 5, it was already occupied. He looked at his phone and saw that his seat assignment was now way back in Y!

He asked a flight attendant about the seat assignment change, who told him he should go back out to check with a gate agent, so he actually deplaned and went out to speak with the GAs working the flight. They told him he had never been checked in for the LAX-DFW segment. He asked how he could have a boarding pass if he had never been checked in, and they reportedly kept insisting that they system showed he had never been checked in for the flight.

At that point, he called me for help, and I heard the remainder of the conversation directly myself over the phone -- the GAs were shockingly rude to him and continued to tell him he had never been checked in for the flight. Eventually, they relented and admitted his seat assignment had been dropped. They refused to research how that might have happened, but I am left wondering whether it has anything to do with the new automated upgrade clearing process at T-40m. Given how defensive they were, though, I also wonder if one of the GAs was just being overly aggressive trying to get the flight out on time and manually dropped his seat, assuming he wouldn't make the connection. Since he had not been late, he felt justified asking for his original seat assignment back, and they refused to move the passenger who had been upgraded into his old J seat.

After rudely shouting at him several times, with a female agent saying "You crazy, I don't have to look at your phone" to him at one point when he tried to show them his old mobile boarding pass for the J seat, the GAs ultimately closed the flight while he was still trying to sort out the situation, and they refused to re-book him on anything but standby, despite confirmed seats being available on all other LAX-DFW flights today. I heard a male GA tell him that there were no confirmed seats available on any of the subsequent LAX-DFW flights. I had EF open and knew that wasn't the case, so I told him to tell them the next flight had 2 J seats and 1 Y seat available. The male agent kept saying, "No, my screen shows zero seats."

I hung up and called a CK agent (hold time was 3 minutes today), who stated she would help him because he's EP, and she was able to get him a confirmed J seat on one of the later flights (very good service recovery on her part). Unfortunately, with limited daily DFW-xxx flights, his new itinerary resulted in a 6 hour DFW layover (the original connection would have been about an hour). I advised him to purchase a $150 Flagship Lounge day pass at DFW, which might be covered by his credit card insurance (or may hopefully be reimbursed by AA in the end -- we'll see). He's still stuck at DFW now.

Since he's EP, I advised him to contact Customer Relations and the Executive Liaison team to ask for an explanation about what happened. He also got the names of the gate agents at LAX and intends to submit complaints about the way they treated him, including failing to explain about his seat being reassigned, closing the flight, and then lying about there being no confirmed seats available on the later LAX-DFW flights today. It's incredible how punitive they attempted to be closing the flight right in front of him without warning while they were still discussing the situation and then trying to force him to fly standby.

I can only speculate that, prior to his arrival at the gate, the GA felt he would miss the connection and dropped the seat, or else the system did it (perhaps related to the new T-40m clearing I referenced above). Has anyone else had issues like this recently, or would you have handled the situation differently? I'm going to help him with his responses to AA and am just curious about any feedback from fellow FTers before he starts that process on Monday. I imagine AA will be able to research the situation to determine exactly what happened.