knotseh

you snooze you loose! i guess it pays to pay attention at the gate.

Too bad AC's app wasn't better and would notify people of op-ups....but that might a whole nother issue

yyznomad

Maybe there were 30+ SEs on your flight?
Kidding.

I sometimes want to close my eyes and ears and not see who gets opupped if I were in Y. But since I'm always in J I try to just ignore who gets free J seats because if I tried to worry about every scenario, I'd have a lot of grey hair by now.

But this whole seemingly random opupping thing really smacks in the face of the eUp cabin-cheapening stance AC has going.

Mict

A friend of mine got op up from Tango to Business on BRU-YUL earlier this week. He has no status on Air Canada nor any other airline. Quite surprising for me that he got the upgrade on a Tango fare.

Flying PE on ZRH-YYZ in a few days, flight looks oversold, I hope for the best

drvannostren

There's almost always no shows and misconnects. Don't forget about people potentially buying LMU's. If AC's revenue management has any brains on a flight like this they'll actually make an LMU at an attractive price as well so that people are enticed to take them.

Also, no one will ever call you in the AC lounge. Most airlines (at least that I've flown) specifically say "no announcements are made in this lounge", that refers to not only flight boarding but also personal announcements.

knotseh

i remember....one of the first times i ever went to the lounge and they scanned my BP, i thought awesome! They're going to tell me if the flight get cancelled...gate change...etc. but nope!
There must be some airlines which do this though?

kraftdinner_

I have an acquaintance who's an AC gate agent and they said that there's no prescribed order to give out opups (unlike clearing the eupgrade list where the rules state is goes by status...) The only priority in a situation where opups are required is to get the flight out on time. So while most GAs will give them out based on status, it's not the rule, so if they decide to give them out based on who's standing closest to them, their friends, who's the most attractive etc. nobody can fault them since there's no rule against that.

canadiancow

I can fault whomever I want for whatever reason I want

FlyerTalker683455

Just FYI. 2 SE and one non status. Same reservation, all Op-Upped together on a short YYZ-YOW run recently.

yyznomad

Thank you for the one-degree confirmation. I will accept this as is and am really disappointed to hear of this considering the whole AC campaign of us FFs and Million Milers cheapening their J cabin. It is what is is, unfortunately.

So if I happen to be in Y (thankfully, not), I will basically accept the fact that the GA will not consider me at all, being S100K, and a near 2MM to boot. This is where closing my eyes and plugging my ears while I rot in my Y seat will actually be a good thing for me. :0

Adam Smith

But it's really corporate policy that you should be faulting, if kraftdinner_ is truly correct. Fault the GAs for not following the extremely clear zoned boarding procedures. Fault the airline for not instructing GAs to clear op-ups by status/fare type, but it's hard to fault the GAs for doing whatever they feel like if there's no policy in place.

As for my experiences, I've had maybe 2-3 op-ups in all my time flying AC. Then again, I'm in paid J on long-hauls and have usually eUp-ed on domestic/TB. But I think one time I was called to the gate in advance (and got my girlfriend, non-status and different PNR, op-uped with me) and the 1-2 times they just gave me a new BP after scanning mine. Then again, I usually am among the first few people to board the plane, so I can see how they would have given away the op-up if I had lingered in the lounge and not showed up until late in boarding.

CanadianMike

While we're on the topic, as a FT rookie, can someone explain to me the alpha-numeric codes for how full each class / fare type is?

Admiral Ackbar

http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...s-expert-mode/

CanadianMike

Thank you for that.

Is their an AC specific one? Or do you need Mileageplus to login and search AC flights on their portal?

Adam Smith

http://www.aircanada.com/en/aeroplan...milesChart.pdf

The fare class will show up on the next page after you've selected your flights. But if you're flying on AC, with tickets that are purchased from AC, really all you need to know is which bucket your fare is from (Tango, Flex, etc). The only real difference within the buckets is that if you have status and want to upgrade, some of the Flex fares cost fewer credits to upgrade than others.

drvannostren

Maybe but none that I know of.

I think I remember being called up to the desk at an Avianca lounge to be informed my flight was cancelled or that I'd been moved to an earlier flight to avoid a possible later delay. But the idea is to keep the lounges quiet. There's plenty of TV screens in most lounges to keep you abreast of the flight into, so they leave it up to you.

In the event there's an international flight or something and the gate has made all their calls, some agents personally may go check the nearest bar, or call the lounge, but that's rare.

As far as hovering goes, that stinks, I hate waiting around the gate, who knows maybe I've missed op-ups. My co-worker seems to get voluntary bump offers a lot too whereas I don't, could be the fact he was travelling on Thursdays and mine was Tuesdays, could be he waits at the gate earlier than I do, could be blind luck. Oh well.

Speaking to the procedure of holding a new BP. It depends on the agent remembering the names I think. There's clearly some sort of IT alert they get but it doesn't always get through to them. I've been stopped on boarding saying "oh we've got a new boarding pass for you" with my upgrades, but there was also an occasion I got on board, sat down in 12C only to have someone else with the same seat then the agent came down and said to me "oh you're in 3A, sorry I should've caught you up top".