padawanflyer

Recently I was travelling YYZ-YVR, at approximately T-50, I was first on the upgrade list (I was confirmed in PY, eupgrade requested to J), and the stats in the app showed 40 J seats, 38 booked, 35 checked in. I was feeling pretty good about my chances at that point. However at about T-30, they started calling up names, but not mine. I checked that app again, and they had processed a big group from stand-by (I saw the same names that jumped in front of me, show up in the standby list) straight into J (now 40 booked and 40 checked in) and there I was still first on the upgrade list. From hanging around the folks that were called up, I determined that they had been on paid J tickets on an earlier flight to YVR that they had missed due their connecting flight arriving late (i.e. it wasn't their fault). Anyways, what I'm wondering is whether the AC gate agents followed the correct procedure or not when they filled the J cabin ahead of me?

MSPeconomist

On some airlines, the standby list includes confirmed passengers who are waiting for seat assignments. If AC was still selling business class seats at the time the group misconnected, they should have been rebooked onto your flight in a confirmed rather than standby status, especially if they had paid J tickets. [If they had upgraded into business class, it's possibly more ambiguous.]

canadiancow

The first thing you need to do is ignore the words "standby" and "upgrade" in the app.

The "upgrade" list is the J cabin list, for both standby and upgrades.

The "standby" list(s) are the Y (standby) and PY (standby and upgrade) lists.

With that out of the way, your scenario makes no sense. Paid J standby would only show up on the "upgrade" list, not the "standby" list.

Additionally, if you misconnect, you get rebooked into positive space on the next flight in your ticketed cabin. If it was only booked 38/40, they never would have been on standby or in Y on the flight.

I can answer your "standby processed before upgrades?" question, but I don't think it's at all relevant to what happened here.

padawanflyer

So any idea what did happen here? At T-50, I walked up to the gate and asked about upgrades, they said they were going process them very soon. So leaving out the information about 'paid J' that I gleaned after the fact, is there any scenario that makes sense? After they called up the upgrades, there were a large number of new names (with a green check beside them) on the standby tab of the app and several of those names were now on the upgraded to J list in the app. I was, and still am, confused as to what happened, since at T-50, I thought my prospects were pretty good.

canadiancow

On a domestic flight, PDM will process the onload list at T-40, so the timing sounds right.

But unless you have a screenshot of the J list after T-45 and before T-40, as well as right after T-40, there isn't much information to go on.

padawanflyer

No screenshots, just my memory. The scenario didn't make sense to me either. In particular, the part that was strange to me was the new names in the J-upgrade list that got upgraded ahead of me, also showed up (newly) in the standby list. This was not something I'd ever seen happen before, I fly enough (E75K) that this just seemed really odd to me, but I don't know enough about the process to know if I should feel annoyed that the gate agent had somehow taken a short-cut to fill the plane or I was just unlucky.

Anyways, thanks for the response, I appreciate it, if there is a next time I will try to capture concrete evidence and post it here.

canadiancow

If they went around PDM, it will very likely audited. It's quite obvious when an agent does anything manually.

Assuming everything you say is fact (and the only part I question is the "paid J misconnect" because you only know what you were told), my only guess is they were somehow manually cleared into Y via standby, then upgraded. But it's a very roundabout way of moving paid J onto a flight.

Santander

Latitude Pass? I've had an agent do basically that for me when I've misconnected on a Lat Pass itinerary.

ridefar

You don't even need a Lat Pass. Just a confirmed upgrade same day. For $75 on a Flex pass you can move to an earlier flight and bypass the upgrade process (assuming you have already been confirmed in the J cabin). The Lat pass just saves you the $75.

canadiancow

At the airport, Latitude pass looks like a Y fare or a J fare (if North America and complimentary upgraded).

In neither situation should anyone clear you into Y and then bypass the list to get you into J.

Either you're in J, and you stay in J, or you're in Y, and you're on the upgrade list.