Originally Posted by
illico
I had the same thing happen to us recently to us where we were downgraded due to deadheading piiots + a downgauge in aircraft. It wasnt so much that wewere downgraded out of J that bothered me as much that they separated us and put in middle seats. We did not clear right away when we booked the flight but I was able to select preferred seats on an A220. Later on the e-ups cleared. Now granted it was a relatively short flight YYC-YUL but I woud have rather been downgraded back to our seats as a pair than be separated into two middles. Nothing they could do about it, they said.
Someone (or something?) once offloaded me from YYZ-SFO on a YQB-YUL-YYZ-SFO itinerary. I'd been sitting in the YYZ MLL for around 2 hours. So they gave my seat away. I was an eUpgrade, so this really concerned me.
But the GA moved:
1. The person in my original J seat to a different J seat
2. The person in that J seat to an exit row
3. The person in that exit row seat to somewhere else
So they certainly can do it, but you can imagine that everyone they have to move might have a similar "but I was in a better seat before" argument.
I seem to recall reading something on FT where someone who had booked PY and upgraded to J ended up downgrading to Y, and again, that just seems like a lazy agent (which I would not have accepted - if I paid for PY, you're not downgrading me from J to Y).