Originally Posted by
moldavian
I am so sick of "elites" [...] They are the same people that wouldn't give up their seat up front to a Marine
If I have a confirmed seat up front then it's my decision whether to give it up or not. AA can obviously switch me, for good reasons or bad, but anything else is my personal decision.
Originally Posted by
moldavian
They moan and groan when they have to move from 2A to 2B because a woman wants to sit next to her husband.
I've tried and failed to understand this. If I give up 2A to this woman and take 2B in exchange, she'll be sitting next to me and no one else. Or has her husband been tacked to the fuselage outside row 2?
More seriously, one doesn't "have" to move to help couples wanting to sit together. Our experience to date has been that most people we've asked have agreed to help us. I think it's a fair bet that many if not most of them have been passengers with elite status.
Elites have earned the right to some entitlement, specifically the ones promised by the airline for being elite. We do that by flying a lot and giving them our money.
This obviously needs to be spelled out again and again. Frequent flyers with elite status don't have a "sense" of entitlement, they
have certain entitlements to priority treatment. For
moldavian's benefit: I've got this deal going on with the airline. I buy some 70% of my air travel from them and they give me benefits, including ways to get up front more easily than people who fly AA less frequently. Other people, including many who have responded here, fly two or three times as much as I do. They get upgrades even more easily. AA and other airlines have determined that this makes commercial sense for them. Live with that.
Originally Posted by
aa csm
go to the station a few days before your trip and talk to the station manager and see if he can help you out. That might be the best course of action if you really want the upgrades.
Wrong. The very "best course of action" if Mr and Mrs OP "really want" the F seats is to secure them by one of the legitimate means already suggested in this thread.
Originally Posted by
JDiver
some "travel writers"
still persist in writing all you have to do is show up well dressed and give the GA puppy dog eyes to get an upgrade.
Sad but true. And not just "travel writers"...:
Originally Posted by
elitetraveler
To the OP, dress nicely, be happy, offer a compliment to the agent when you are checking in about how good they look
and then ask politely
Great tip. My wife and I have two 12-hour flights in July, booked in coach with an airline where we don't have status, so we'll try this.
Originally Posted by
moldavian
I completely agree that most elites are accommodating, kind and friendly.
Hang on a moment... are those the same elites you're "so sick of"? How about retreating from both extremes and trying the middle ground. Attributing any kind of personality traits, either positive or negative, to "most elites" is probably foolish.
In my experience, most of the time it's good to have elite passengers around you: experienced flyers usually cause fewer delays at security and just 'do' airports and planes better than infrequent travellers. They can radiate calm when all around them are hot and bothered. But it's also fair to say that some other frequent flyers are hard to be around, impatient with others and wanting everything to be "just so" even though years of experience should have taught them that it rarely is. And some of us are patient and accommodating one day and difficult to be near the next... ;-)
Originally Posted by
moldavian
if I were in the departure lounge talking to a nice couple leaving on their honeymoon I would offer them my F seat. [...] Last year I gave away my paid F seat on a Hawaii flight.
Great. Do that as often as you want. Just don't give away
my F seat and don't advocate that AA should be able to.
Originally Posted by
aa csm
pax will have to have a compelling reason (honeymoon) to stand any chance of getting an upgrade.
I still don't get this: why is a honeymoon a "compelling reason" to give someone an upgrade they're not otherwise entitled to? If AA were making F seats available to people who are down on their luck (they aren't), then cute newly-weds taking an expensive foreign holiday wouldn't be at the top of my list. Give a seat to someone newly widowed instead. I mean it.