ctporter

On Friday, I was on AS 19 (MCO SEA) with a ticket I had purchased back in May through my company travel agency per my company requirements. I got my confirmation letter and immediately went to AS site and entered the flight into My trips and clicked on Request Complimentary Upgrade. Got the dialog box saying my request was successful and sure enough I now saw "first class wait listed" on my trip information. On Friday, when I went got to the gate I asked to know how far down the waitlist I was (knowing full well there was no chance of upgrade, I was just wanting to know where in the list I was) Well, I was not on the list at all. Hmmmm.. I called the Gold desk to ask about that, because obviously something was off. Patty was incredibly nice, noted that according to Reservations I sure was supposed to be on the list and had been since May. She wanted me to hand the phone to the gate agent so she could talk to them about why I was not on the list. (He had just left down the jetway and was obviously busy with deplaning AS 18) Patty told me to have them check again because something was off. So when a second agent came over I explained the situation, and she looked, sure enough I was not on the list. She would have added me to the list but that was NOT what I was looking for, I wanted to know where I should have been on the list. I am nervous now about my upcoming SEA-SAT, SAT-SEA, SEA-SFO, SFO-SEA, SEA-LAX, LAX-SEA trips. (all of those by the way do show up in reservations as fc wait listed but then, so did the SEA-MCO and MCO-SEA flight.

kwl747

Strange.

At least for all your upcoming flights (minus SAT-SEA) you'll be at gates operated by AS employees that might be able to dissect the problem better.

BenA

Yikes. That's... not good.

To be honest this is another sketchy aspect of an AS upgrade system that overall seems a little unfair to me - with MVPs and Golds lumped together, and with the T-24 U steal in effect, and with the lack of a universally followed upgrade priority list. Don't get me wrong - as a DL elite with an ExpertFlyer subscription who knows how to play the game, my percentage on AS is very high - but I can't imagine you folks with AS status find it very equitable, and I'm really surprised AS hasn't done anything to fix it.

I was able to easily split my reservation by calling DL, and now we're both on separate itineraries. My girlfriend's MVP upgrade was not automatically requested, but a phone agent for Alaska was able to manually perform that step, and now we seem to be good to go.

(And yes, SEA-BOS will be a tough upgrade, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take...)

Thanks for the advice!

jackal

Welcome to our world. Thank the travel gods your airline decided to invest in IT.

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0.0.583 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I think the UG loophole was closed this summer...

jfolliard

I'm MVPG. On a flight which does not yet show U status (but plenty of seats on the seat map) do I have a better chance at grabbing one of those seats if and when they open up for upgrades by purchasing a value fare over a best deal fare? Or does it matter? If not I'd rather save the $100 or so.

Thanks.

Jack

baliktad

Yes, as an MVPG you will be placed on the upgrade waitlist immediately when you purchase a Value fare. If you buy a Best Deal fare, you will not be placed on the waitlist until 72 hours prior to takeoff.

Buying a Value fare means that if upgrade space opens up prior to 72 hours before takeoff, you can clear immediately. If it opens up within 72 hours of takeoff, you will clear before those Golds who did not purchase Value fares.

jfolliard

thanks! makes sense.

amgray19

Maybe this has been answered elsewhere. If so, I missed it.

My question is not how the processes already described work (great explanations), but how/when does AS decide to actually release seats as U seats if they aren't already? That seems to happen sometime between T-72 to T-0 hours, but what's the trigger? Is there a wait to see if someone will buy the remaining F seats, and if they don't at some point seats are released as U? Any insights?

Happy Friday, y'all! ^

jackal

Only the Revenue Management department knows the answer to your question.

sefoley27

I just want to confirm I understand this...

Are paid upgrades (e.g. $100 for SEA-ORD) available only in the cases that first class seats are still unfilled after all elites have been upgraded? Or is there ever an opportunity to pay the $100 to upgrade to jump ahead of qualifying elites?

I've got the Amex Platinum so I'd like to use the $200 annual benefit towards two upgrades. But I'm also MVP so -- if i understand this right -- in the rare occasions where a paid upgrade is available I would have already been upgraded because of my elite status. So elites will never need or even have the option to pay for an upgrade.

Is that right?

baliktad

Yes, paid upgrades are only offered after the waitlist has been cleared of all AS and DL elites. You might find more value purchasing some BR day passes, and perhaps bartering with those in CC.

czpdx

The only exception might be when you are traveling with a companion (if you're MVP and not MVPG), in which case you wouldn't get upgraded at all in advance if you're on the same PNR and would need to handle it at the gate - getting yourself upgraded for free and paying the upgrade fee for your companion. Assuming they had two seats available.

beckoa

It might be possible to purchase gift certificates too...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...orts-only.html

alshrink

To Beckoa or Jackal or any of you that share great posts from experience: is their a rough rule of thumb of how much your willing to pay for a Value fare to increase chance of complimentary upgrade.