dawtips

Nine hours until my MCO-SEA flight takes off. There are at least seven first class seats open right now (confirmed by calling Alaska). I've never seen that many FC seats held this long.

WittingGadabout

Same thing happened to me SEA to EWR on Tuesday. Economy was sold out, but when I checked in at the airport it let me request and then confirmed my upgrade at the kiosk. Not sure why as MVPG, but good thing since the upgrade request list was 20 deep.

golfingboy

To be honest, at T-24 hours when the list goes under airport control, I'd rather AS to block ALL upgrades until at the gate so people can't skip those who are already on the waitlist....

beckoa

...but then AS couldn't sell upgrades until after this...

golfingboy

Sell em at the gate... It is annoying that I have to continuously go through OLCI a bunch of time to ensure I get the upgrade if any space opens up. If AS does not release U space at T-24 hours then good chance that it is not going to be released close to the departure time.

I guarantee you that there will be more than 7 people on the waitlist for SEA-MCO, so AS is not really losing anything here.

beckoa

No... I concur- I'm sayin' that AS likes the extra revenue of whY buyup during OLCI... so this hasn't been changed yet.

golfingboy

Lol, sorry for the slight misunderstanding Thought it was directed at me

7am flight with 3.5 hours of sleep sure does wonders

dawtips

I got the upgrade. I got to the airport with about 4 hours till the flight and the kiosk gave me the option to upgrade.

As a 75k, I think I've gotten used to an upgrade almost every single time, so seeing 7+ seats open on the same day as the flight kinda made me feel cheated.

baliktad

In situations where there are still F seats available at T-24, but your upgrade has not cleared yet, your best shot at snagging one is to use OLCI early and often. You don't need to go all the way through, just to the point where you are offered the option to change to earlier/later/upgraded seat. If you see the link to upgrade, congrats; if not, just close your browser and try again later. Your chances are not better/worse at the airport than at OLCI, so no need to try and beat the crowd to the airport.

Since AS masks U availability to tools like ExpertFlyer at T-24, you can't use alerts to let you know when to jump. One minor loophole here is that they do not mask A availability. You can set an alert for A space, and since A is always a subset of U, if A pops up, you know there is U availability. (The reverse, however, is not true; just because there is no A space does not necessarily imply that there is no U space.) This trick has saved my bacon several times, including at least 1 transcon and 1 Hawaii flight where U space was released very late.

dawtips

Yup, I know the trick. I had been checking it every two hours since the 24 hour mark. Looks like the released seats around the 4-6 hour mark. It just seems like a lot of seats to hold for so long.

jackal

Once the waitlist goes under airport control at T-24.5, does the waitlist upgrade processor stop functioning? Some documentation I've seen seems to indicate it does. If that's the case, is it not until the GAs start working the flight that elites are upgraded?

If that's the case, then if U is opened up after OLCI starts but before boarding starts, it seems like it's a GAPING hole for buy-ups to cut in front of elites. I mean, potentially almost 24 hours where elites are not being upgraded? Alaska is practically FORCING us to use the OLCI loophole just to protect us from Joe Non-Status with a credit card!

Or is there some secret person in the dungeon of the airport monitoring this and working upgrades throughout the day? If so, he/she isn't fast enough.

baliktad

Yes, this happens, and yes, especially on the long-haul routes. This is what RR refers to as "the waitlist can lose integrity" at T-24 when the flight goes to airport control. It allows any elite at any level to score a complimentary upgrade, or any Y/S/B/M/H non-status pax to secure a paid upgrade, totally destroying the meticulously prioritized waitlist.

I gather it's tough for AS to deal with given their current infrastructure, because there are several events that can cause U space to become available (revenue management, last-minute cancellations, equipment changes, etc.) and there is no centralized system (a la DL's DNS) that could trigger the upgrade processor in each of those cases. So either they shut off all day-of-departure upgrades (potentially losing buy-up revenue) or let it continue to operate as "open season" for anybody. I *strongly* believe AS's approach to this will be a band-aid solution that forces the upgrade processor to run more frequently day of departure (hourly perhaps?). This will up the percentage that elites get seats assigned automatically but still leaves opportunity for sniping.

Truly fixing the problem would require a much more significant IT investment than AS is willing to make at this point.

dave1013

I read the notes of every Gold lunch (thanks to all for contributing, BTW) and it seems like every time, RR mentions "We know this is a problem and we have a fix on the way." Might be nice to have a definitive resolution date. Of course, the same can be said for Delta reciprocity - we had to wait years for that, too.

ANC RED-EYE

I've had this happen to me at least once (confirmed by an employee on this board). Waitlisted as MVPG for an upgrade, and a non-status passenger purchased the upgrade out from under the waitlist during check-in.

I think they should definitely turn off upgrades at T-24.5 hours. This would not lose buy up revenue. After all, we are told that buy ups are supposed to be only after elite comp upgrades... So, unless that is a lie, they would not lose any intentional buy up revenue. It seems that turning it off until T-1 hour to be manually processed by the GA is the best scenario, and would take a much less complicated software upgrade.

baliktad

It's very hard for me to reconcile this statement of yours below...

...with this one:

With the "loosey-goosey" system in place today, AS is making money selling upgrades to non-status pax. In some cases, those upgrades should have gone to waitlisted elites. If AS futzes with this situation in any way, they will lose money. Hence, they are financially motivated to keep the current situation and continue placating elites by promising a forthcoming solution and/or downplaying the extent of the current problem.