Originally Posted by
scotts tots
Curious to hear the board's take on this. Yesterday flew a UAX flight to DEN and my wife & I were #1 and #2 on the waitlist with 1 seat available. I got the upgrade -- but then declined so I could sit in E+ with wife (row 7 on the 175 has more legroom than F, so not bad).
Anyway - there was another 15 people on the upgrade list; but FA approaches another 1K who was behind us to offer upgrade; she declines because of spouse... and then the flight takes off with 2 seats available in F (very odd - not next to one another, but across). I almost said something, but obviously mid-flight not going to ask folks to move around, but I was very confused as to how on the WL with 15+ people, no one was moved up -- and I'm assuming we weren't approached since I declined, but also felt like since we were #1 and #2 on WL, we would have both been given the UG.
I'd never seen this happen before - so chalked it up to the GA and FA's inexperience. But how could that have happened?
Very likely related to the GAs manually writing down who is on the upgrade list and then walking on the plane and asking them if they want to move up. Given that the rate of people declining upgrades is super small the GA probably only wrote down the first 2-4 names on the list. Since everybody declined they closed the door and off they went. The other option was for them to walk up to the computer, get the next few names and go through the process again. The GA made a valid attempt to upgrade people and when they all declined the flight was closed and dispatched. Very normal. The GAs are not given handheld devices like the onboard crew so they can't see the upgrade list in this situation.
-RM