Eujeanie

On our flight this past Monday (SEA/LAS) I checked in on-line the day before as usual. We did not appear on the website under "First Class Upgrades". I called and was assured we were on the list, they could see me on their end, and they said we would see ourselves on the list at the Gate.

Well, guess what...we were not on the list at the Gate. Asked the GA, she had no idea, she typed something in and magically we appeared.

Why did we not appear on the list?

It is irrelevant that we had no chance anyway (we were pretty far down) but it is very frustrating that these glitches keep happening.

cblaisd

Forgive me for hijacking, but where on one's itinerary on the website do you see the "First Class Upgrade" list? All I see on mine is "First Class Waitlisted" but don't see any actual list.

The only way to see a list that I'm aware of is on the app, but, of course, since the advent of Premium Class upgrades, if you're upgraded to Premium Class you no longer show in the app's listing for F upgrades.

Very frustrating all around.

rustykettel

It's under flight status. Not sure if there's a direct link from a reservation.

https://m.alaskaair.com/flightstatus

(sorry, can't get the non mobile URL to come up on my phone)

cblaisd

Ah, okay. Got it. Thank you.

Eujeanie

Yes, once you check in, you go to Flight Status, and you can see "Awaiting Seats" and "First Class Upgrades".

On my flight it was an older plane (sorry don't know the numbers) so there was no PC available, it was just either Y or F. But we still should have appeared on the F waitlist.

cblaisd

So very maddening, isn't it?

And on PC-equipped planes, if you get a Premium seat in advance you no longer show as listed on the F upgrade list online.

Wonder why they can't fix these issues?

Eujeanie

It's even worse than that! We uncheck (read: do NOT check) for PC upgrades, and on a few flights we've been taken out of our beloved exit row and put it PC! What is the point of giving you the option to choose PC, but you still get it even if you don't want it? (I'm not a whiner, but I see NO benefit to the way up front PC rows - we love the exit row for many reasons.)

Thankfully to the generosity of the "old" AS (before they gave away the store to the Virgins and ignored us) all but one of the rest of our flights this year are already in F (GGU's, favorable Gold prices).

ctporter

You can get there from the web, it is home page > Travel Info > Manage travel> Flight Status. or here:
https://www.alaskaair.com/flightstat...D:FlightStatus

Seattlenerd

Candidly, one unintended consequence of the IT instability over upgrades and the new upgrade process is that I am no longer favoring AS on my business travel. I'm now equally likely to choose AA.

In both cases (since I'm forced to book through a corporate travel portal for the lowest available fare), I can select good coach seats. And on AA I can immediately select Main Cabin Extra as an AS Gold. No need to wait for the 72-hour upgrade window to see if AS Premium seats become available (if I can't get into an exit row).

Personally, I can no longer recommend pursuing AS elite status to my friends and colleagues based on upgrade benefits as it stands. There are many other nice and important AS elite benefits, but on upgrades alone, there are too many problems right now.

eethan

After checking in the night before my flight, I was 2nd on the upgrade list. The morning of my flight, someone lower on the list got upgraded ahead of me. As it turned out, she was regular MVP who booked the same fare class a month before I did.

Now I realize that 24 hours before the flight, Golds and MVPs have same priority. But then why did the upgrade list show me as #2 and her as #4 ?

brettsir

Seattlenerd

I made my comment/post above in March 2017 (to which this is now responding), so I'll simply amend it to say that I no longer prefer AA as an equal alternative because of the end of the domestic US relationship with AS.

But I've also discovered that questioning the GA in situations like this doesn't necessarily work. Sometimes the GA has no control, such as when ticket agents outside of the gate are selling upgrades at the check-in counter over the GA.

be_rettSEA

Honestly I think this has more to do with issues with the upgrade processor than with gate agents upgrading lower priority members. I've noticed U class availability on flights within the upgrade window, called and been told that yes there is U space, but they could not upgrade me because there were folks higher than me on the list. Technically though, if you find an agent that doesn't realize that, they can manually clear you into one of those U slots, skipping a head of people with higher priority than you. I can speak of one instance on a trans-con (DCA-SEA) where my Q fare as MVPG was upgraded by asking Alaska on Twitter why upgrades weren't clearing 12 hrs after U space opened up, and one of their social media staff (name I hadn't recognized so must have been newer) just went ahead and cleared me into first. Wasn't asking them to do this (more was letting them know of an issue with the processor), but certainly wasn't going to be asked to be moved back on a 6 hr flight to allow 75Ks or higher fares purchased before me a chance to clear first. Something similar could have happened here.

rustykettel

I wonder it's something like Post #1 in this thread by missy where there's two different waitlists going on coupled with the changes made to order by fare class, and the displayed list is ordered by status, but isn't really behind the scenes.

eethan

@missydarlin
If AS has the systems in place to prioritize status before fare class, why don't you guys just use that system to assign upgrades at T-24? That would make more logical and business sense than the current system, which lumps Golds and MVPs into the same priority.