amunter

I'm on the afternoon ORD-PDX tomorrow, and it has been F1 for a while, so I've been holding out hope that I might get the seat if it becomes a U at T-24. So, at T-23 or so, I fire up EF and look, and, sadly, it's now F0 U0.

But in a fit of wanting to artificially get my hopes up, I fire up the iOS app, and wait for it to refresh, then bring up the waitlist. It's quite long, but I'm nowhere on it. Puzzled (My Trips says I'm waitlisted), I call the Gold Line.

The agent says it's a known problem that the app shows everybody else on the waitlist, but not the person with the app. She says there's a work order in, but nobody knows why it's happening. But she's confident I'm on the list, even though my odds are (we both agreed) long.

However, this seems like a significant issue with the waitlist, if you can't see yourself on it. Anybody else having this issue, or is this an agent gone rogue? (Or an agent who is secretly advocating everyone toward Android devices?) )

lalala

I'm always show up on the WL, usually the person below the person that cleared.

ou81two

Did you book this through alaska.com or through a corporate third party travel site. I've been having this issue since I got the app. They've had systematic issues for years that deny upgrades to corporate travelers.

aserican

Well does your name show up on the browser waitlist?

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Or m.alaskaair.com?

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I'm assuming this is AS675?

https://m.alaskaair.com/prioritylist/submit/upgrade/AS/675/2015-02-13%2005.30%20PM/ORD?rp=fs&arr=PDX

SamuelS

Yikes, that's a long wait list! I thought only AK routes got that many elites on the list! ;P

IJK

The reason your name is no longer on the upgrade list could be because you were 'upgraded'
but the upgrade did not take effect. But your name was removed from the list nevertheless.

This happened to me recently. After checking in online shortly before arriving at the airport,
I noticed that I was not on the upgrade list. I asked the boarding agent "Was I ever on the UG
list?" They said I had been upgraded, but due to a glitch, the upgrade did not go through.

According to whoever they contacted, it was associated with the change/entry of a redress
number of some other such thing at the time of the 'upgrade'. I had not made any changes
whatsoever. They said nothing could be done at that point just before boarding ("obviously")
but I was offered a 'better' seat that had just become available.


Curiously, as entered the aircraft as one of the last to board, I noticed an empty FC seat.
Soon afterwards, I noticed someone else (sitting in the 'better' seat I was offered) being
offered an upgrade when the gate agent came onboard.

So much for 'nothing they could do', even after being upgraded by the system days earlier.



Not sure if this glitch has anything to do with other folks' names disappearing from the
upgrade list, but this might be a far more serious problem than it may have appeared.

.

amunter

Sorry for the delay on getting back to this thread!

Yep, beckoa, that was the flight - and my name doesn't appear anywhere on the list you posted. I frankly forgot about checking the website list; I was at the tail end of a whirlwind business trip and was fading fast.

The trip was booked directly through AS. IJK, your theory is certainly plausible, but I'm not sure how I would be able to figure that out, nor how I could address it if it happens again in the future. It sounds like you had an unfortunate experience in your situation!

I appreciate everybody's thoughts. It ended up as not a crazily bad flight (exit row window with a quiet and appropriately-width-proportioned neighbor), but it was still an oddity to be sure.

(I had more oddities the next day with a flight where my WL level jumped all over the place, but that's a topic for another thread at another time...)

QuietLion

I think the waitlist view is messed up, both on the web and the phone app. I was 11th according to the app but I got upgraded. I first noticed this about a week ago.

QL

Kieron

There's a display quirk I've run into several times when I've been upgraded after I've checked in: my seat assignment will change to "see agent", and the phone waitlist will move me to the bottom of the list. The gate agent always has to call it in to release the actual seat for me, though half the time they've already done so before I reach the podium and already have a new boarding pass waiting for me. Is that the sort of scenario you saw?

I did run into a problem with that recently when checking a bag at SFO - the counter agent insisted that I was still on the waitlist but not upgraded, and wanted to reassign me to an open coach seat (in the middle, in the back). The gate agent was much better informed, straightened it out immediately, and handed me a boarding pass for 1F. However, this situation was an unusual exception... though maybe it's because I usually don't check bags!

kyden

I flew from SFO -> SEA last week and there were 26 people on the upgrade list and 5 on standby, 3 of whom did not make the flight.

amunter

I hoped it was a display quirk, and my experience on SEA-DCA on the morning of Feb 14 might bear that out, too.

That trip was my wife and I together (both 75k), and at T-24 of scheduled departure, we were #s 1 & 2. At T-4, we were #s 2 & 3, behind Phi/V. Checking again at T-1, we were at #s 1/2 again with Phi/V dropped down to around #12.

The flight was delayed a few times for an hour each time, and after a couple of the delays, I asked the gate agent if we might be able to get F seats due to reaccommodations, and ... she upgraded Phi/V first, then us, and we were in that order on the "already upgraded" screen at the gate.

So that seems to point toward a display issue in that case. Although not being on the list at all (per the post upthread) on the ORD-PDX segment seems less display-ish to me.

Although I always want a F upgrade, I'm also a believer in the "want F, buy F" school of thought. So I raise these experiences not because I'm necessarily concerned about these specifics, but rather if there's a more systemic issue. It sounds, from others' comments in the thread, that this might be the case...