Service Director onboard upgrade
 

On a recent flight from Europe I boarded the plane to find someone else occupying my J seat. I was running very late due to a delayed connecting flight. A flight attendant asked the person occupying my seat for her boarding pass which clearly showed a seat in the Y cabin. The lady told the FA that she was told she could sit there by the service director. At this point the FA dealing with the situation went up to the front galley to let the SD know, who came back and told me discreetly that this lady was a Ukrainian refugee and that she didn't think I was going to show up for the flight so moved her up, and if I wouldn't mind sitting in another seat. 1A was available, so I said no problem. And obviously if the J cabin had been full I assume this passenger would be asked to move back to Y. I personally don't have a huge problem with this especially because the cabin was not full and all the waitlisted upgrades had cleared but it does create a slippery slope. Where does one draw the line? Are SDs authorized to dole out onboard upgrades based on passenger circumstance?

Probably forbidden by AC policy. Probably happens more than we know.

Surprising it happened before the door closed. While I expect management to be very deferential to crew once the aircraft is theirs, I'm surprised a SD would put their neck out before.

It's much more obvious when it happens after the door closes. Do it during the mess of boarding, and maybe no one notices. Although I'm sure they would have when they started taking meal orders.

I'd be ok with a refugee getting a nice seat and no meal, or a nice seat and the meal I don't want, or a nice seat and a spare meal that was the same as the choice I got.

OP did not say. Sometime chaos to door closed is a minute, sometimes 30.

How late were they? That matters.
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Per another FTer whose spouse works for AC, this is one of the only offenses that will result in a SD's immediate termination without the union able to defend/appeal.

The union can grieve whatever it wants. And if AC tried to terminate an SD/FA with zero evidence of theft of services, I'm sure they would, and they would win.

The real point is that the union contract contains very few provisions that allow AC to summarily fire them. Theft of services via unauthorized upgrades is one of them.

Do you plan on writing in? Or just leave it in this thread?
I was thinking about what I'd do (or not do) if I were in your shoes... what would I do after the fact, if anything?
I think I would just let sleeping dogs lie in this case. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But yeah, the SD should've just waited until the doors close, or do it after the seatbelt sign goes off (because I've seen that too).

My personal opinion, regardless of collective bargaining agreement terms or otherwise, is that great organizations empower their people to make good decisions. Part of a decision being defined as a good one is that there were no unintended consequences and that overall the decision resulted in a net positive.

My preference would be to see more of this in the world.

In that case, perhaps the OP should delete his post to reduce the possibility of somebody getting in serious trouble, especially since it does not seem to have been a huge deal for the op.

Somebody did a nice gesture to a stranger in sad and very unusual circumstances, and nobody seems to have been inconvenienced much by the gesture. It would be sad if said gesture would later on result in bad consequences for the guy who did the gesture.

My (jaded) opinion after thinking about this for the day is that if I thought I got caught doing something bad, "Ukrainian refugee" sounds like an excuse that will avoid complaints.

A Ukrainian refugee said "service director" in a coherent sentence? Half the SEs on FT can't do that.

​​​​​​ I've complained about an onboard upgrade once. I escalated it quite high. But no one even understood what I was saying. The "best" response I got was that everyone sitting in J was entitled to be there. Which sounds like they looked at the gate records, and not the fact that someone, wearing a RAIC, was moved up, after the decision to divert to origin. For the record, the mid-flight upgrade was actually quite disruptive to at least two of us.

So no, I don't really believe the story. But I also don't think a complaint would get you very far.

She did not. She described the service director as "the woman with the xxxx hair" to the other flight attendant. I paraphrased.

I haven't provided any details so I don't think the flight or the SD can be traced unless someone makes an official complaint.

I have no intention of filing a complaint; I just wanted to know how others would have reacted. If anything I would complain about the SD's service standards because they were abysmal, not the onboard upgrade.

As long as I get what I paid for, and my unexpected new seat assignment isn't objectively inferior, I would not have any reaction to the seating position of any other passenger on an airplane.

Presumably not late at all if they could still board...

I would say "subjectively" rather than "objectively", but yeah, unless you're moving me out of 1AK (for the foot space), or away from a companion, I don't care. I have accidentally taken the wrong seat before (because someone else had intentionally taken mine), and I didn't notice until he was addressed as "Mr. Kennedy" for meal orders.

On a TLV-YYZ, due to a security issue (they had no idea how to handle my insulin pump), I ended up boarding after scheduled departure time (I think my checked bag saved me - the bovine, whom I entered security with, had plenty of lounge time, and easily made the flight).

They had given away my J pillow.

Crews seem to start assuming "boarding is complete" way too early. While I have had the door reopened for me once, I think "door closed" is a pretty safe time to assume boarding is complete. Not before.

I boarded 10 mins before scheduled departure time after almost all of the plane had boarded, but they held the flight another 10 mins past departure presumably for all of us connecting from the late inbound arrival.