24left

Absolutely and yes, your trip is farther by a not-insginificant factor. But still...

Well, you know him and he's the best. I also know he appreciates my oft-repeated suggestions to use more of my credits.

YYT82

Yikes, my final upgradeable long haul flight's window opens just ahead of the migration. It looks like I'll need to be Johnny on the spot quick with this one. I can't even afford to be an hour late.

TheCanuckian

This is a gem of a sentence from the email AC just sent about all this: “You will not be able to request upgrades at the airport, and unfortunately we cannot guarantee that upgrades which were not cleared prior to check‑in will not be processed at the gate, even if seat is available.”

24left

Yup, see Cow's post 177 from earlier today.

In other news.....still waiting for my email.

TheCanuckian

This is actually different. Try reading the sentence out loud to see if you can decipher it.

canadiancow

Yup. They can't guarantee upgrades will not be processed.

Which means they may be processed, right?

Regardless, I'm glad they gave us a lot of notice. I'm still waiting for my email, but my flight is in less than 9 days.

FlyerTalker70

which means valued *A Gold elites like myself and rankourabu will be among the first to be upgraded at the gate on our klassy K fares

canadiancow

No?

You've never been ahead of AC*G, and that will continue to be the case.

FlyerTalker70

We’ll see what Amadeus has to say about that!

rankourabu

Maybe not officially, but seemed like lots of tag-displaying AC elites (maybe they were all last year's tags, I wouldnt know) walked to the back at least on two of my E190 opups.



For anyone that has never dealt with the functionality of MANAGE MY BOOKING with A3, TP or LO - you will be longing for the days AC did not use Amadeus!

RatherBeInYOW

The next few months? I can't remember the last time I cleared before the gate on an International flight. What a mess, ugh.

Hopefully my flights happen on time ish Monday morning? Double ugh.

canadiancow

Well they did say they'd be more proactive about clearing things earlier until this is resolved. I've seen J9 R0 flights with a dozen people clearing at the gate. If they clear it down to J2 at T-24, it's not too bad.

But I'll be very annoyed if I'm in PY and there are empty J seats.

svirac

This is as cow said, unacceptable. I’m waitlisted for J on AC875 on 11/26. It’s J7 so I’m confident under normal circumstances that I would clear at the gate, as I’m on a B fare and SE, but now I’m almost thinking since O is wide open I might want to withdraw my J request and upgrade into O instead... but there’s the what if game - what if I would’ve cleared into J??
bah - what a joke.
interested to see what ppl actually experience post Nov 18.

FlyerTalker70

I have not had the pleasure of dealing with A3, TP or LO but could imagine it being challenging, especially how hard it is to even book a flight with TP. This raises an interesting question, what options did AC have in choosing a reservation system? Obviously the elephants in the room are Sabre and Amadeus, but are there other res platforms airlines use that could deal with the many challenges (i.e. direct flights, and leap years which I hear crop up from time to time) that AC has whilst giving them the flexibility they need to offer the various programs they offer from FP and eUpgrades to bid upgrade? I would also be curious why they didn't choose SHARES which is by far a better system than RES III or Amadeus (i.e. UA could implement ConnectionSaver because they had control over that platform).

It is somewhat surprising that for a project of this scale why they cannot roll everything out in the matter of days and weeks not months and quarters? Surely in any big IT project like this one planning would have already been done and the relevant equipment purchased for them to start going into airports and upgrading things. Surely Amadeus has highly specialized teams that could even do this for AC if their IT team is busy getting Flight Pass to work

Having no upgrades clear till the gate is insane, doubly so if you're in a J9 situation. Other airlines, like UA are generally good about clearing upgrades having their elite travellers clear into J at time of booking or worst case a couple days prior to departure. Yes, there still are occasions where there'll be a couple seats left in the front cabin which is determined at the gate. But from my experience that tends to be quite rare, particularly on medium haul domestic flights like New York to Heathrow.

Safe Travels,

James

canadiancow

It's not "no upgrades".

And it doesn't matter what UA does under normal operations, as this is not UA or normal operations.