xsbaggage

Have a paid J ticket YYT-YYC for Aug 5 booked on Aug 2.
Tried OLCI at 23.5 hrs and got GTE assignment.
At airport today told 'It will be worked out"
Paged at desk and given seat 33A - asked about IDB compensation and re-routing and met with blank stares.
Explained that a refund to company buying ticket is not in my best interests.
Eventually rebooked YYT-YHZ-YUL-YOW-YYC in J but moans about redirecting baggage - not my problem.
Presume I'm still entitled to my $100
Is this a new enhancement or have I been away from AC for too long to realise that it's got worse than I thought it had.

zorn

I don't know what happened in your case, but an equipment change or a flight cancellation are also events that can result in too many bums for too many J seats.

The fact they seemed to have botched your involuntary downgrade isn't shocking.

canadiancow

The only time I've heard of that happening is with gate upgrades being undone.

I don't think you're technically eligible for IDB compensation though. You did board.

You get some extra miles though

xsbaggage

No equipment change, flight exactly as advertised. They sold more seats to 'bums', your words, than they had.
A new low point

My reroute is now suffering significant delays - is there limit to the number of standard compensation claims that can be made per trip?

antirealist

This is somewhat disturbing. Let's hope it's a one-off glitch, rather than a policy change. Perhaps a J seat was unusable (or perhaps a Captain needed it...). Do you have any status with AC?

winnipegrev

What were your original flights? Since YYT-YYC isn't flown nonstop.

AC doesn't normally overbook J, I assume some other flight got downgauged and higher priority passengers (Paid J AND SE) bumped you. But still, something smells fishy here... particularly since J loads out of YYT are almost always low and the chances of them being able to overbook it, even if they could, are probably less than the odds of winning the 6/49.

gcashin

I was thinking exactly the same. I was travelling YYT-YYZ yesterday and the J cabin seemed to be entirely eUps and op-ups (Y was oversold), so seems odd to have a YYT-YYZ oversold on a week when paid J loads seem so light.

rehoult

Just because your flight didn't suffer an equipment changes doesn't mean there wasn't one. It's completely possible that an earlier flight got downsized and the extras dumped onto yours. Does it make the fact that they involuntarily downgraded you right? Not in the slightest.

But the assertion that you are making would be a game changer and IMO, making it requires substantially more proof than you are providing.

Tedgrrrr

In Feb. 2012, YVR-SYD was oversold by one in J, as per concierge. But fortunately one pax didn't show up.

AtlanticXpat

I'm curious. When looking at a cabin full of your fellow J class pax, how does one determine whether they are e-up, op-up or paid J? Is there a general shifty-I'm-just-waiting-to-be-told-any-minute-that-actually-my-e-up-is-not-valid look from the e-up crowd, radiated smugness from the op-ups and I-paid-for-my-J-ticket superiority from the paid J? Enquiring minds and all that.

FWIW, I've had pretty much 100% success on e-ups out of YYT. Only the LHR flight seems to be occaisonally impossible to upgrade on.

Tedgrrrr

When you peruse the flight manifest in the galley to see if you know anyone on the plane you can see which J pax got their tickets in the last 24 hours. Doesn't necessarily mean they are upgrades, could have been purchased, but the former inference is pretty reasonable.

gcashin

I can't be 100% sure, but here's a few data points that lead me to think that most J was gate upgrades or op ups:
- The flight availability was showing pretty much wide open in J up to day of departure, and was showing very low in Y and tons of R space. I think it was something like J8Y2R6 with 10 unassigned J seats
- Given that there was plenty of R space right up to departure, I'd expect any eupgrades would have cleared in advance
- There were a ton of people with unassigned seats in Y, so there were a lot of people called up to the podium for seat assignments
- I caught a glance of the manifest when they were taking meal orders, and there were about 8 ML*1 codes
- The person boarding in front of me had his Y boarding pass rejected and was op-upped (and was obviously happy with the surprise op up)

So, I'm not 100% sure how many were op-ups or whether there were a ton of people requesting eUps at the gate, but there were a ton of gate upgrades on a flight that had tons of R space.

hearna

Other flights may have been canceled and merged on to your flight; Unless you have someone from AC to say exactly what happened on that flight, you are merely speculating.

antirealist

It would be very helpful if someone from AC would step up and provide an explanation. Alternatively, the OP might get some help from one of AC's Twitter accounts.

gcashin

I know there were no canceled AC flights from YYT before the flight yesterday. I know that there were a lot of ML*1's and at least one of those was an op up due to oversold Y cabin.

The point is that in August, flights from YYT-YYZ (etc) are generally very full in Y but light on paid J pax, so the situation seems really odd to be oversold in J and having paid J passengers bumped to the back.