Originally Posted by AA2070
About to board AA67, which I fly about twice a month. Another 2 or 3 times a month on AA1945, both of which are domestic 777 legs. Just booked the res today, and was only able to get 42A (at least it's a window)... When I checked in, the machine spit out 9B; nothing in "J" was available when I selected my seat. Did some AAgent notice that one freed up and feel sorry for me, or does some automated process move elites forward when there's space?
There's no automated process; AA would not have paid for it (remember that they didn't even upgrade the seat-blocking-next-to-elites process to make it compatible with online check-in?).
AA has some stellar people in its system, and you must have found one of them. The record of who's done the seat swap is retained, so I would send a Kudos email to AA about this experience, asking them to identify and forward the thanks to the person responsible for this rather substantial customer satisfaction event.