Eurynom0s

Ooh, good point. I was only thinking in terms of old-->new, since I haven't personally experienced the back and forth that other people have (both times I got changed old-->new that was it) I was spacing on that when I made my other post.

VXforever

mikeysf

Eurynom0s

Was this today or yesterday? If so, so much for November 9 being the end of this nightmare.

pcoll

pcoll

Decided to check our flights for Wednesday. We have separate PNR but selected seats together. My seat was 2A and hubby is 2C on Airbus equipment.
Looked at flight to see what the load looks like for Wednesday and saw that my seat was available to sale in F. My Trips -this flight shows my seat as 2A.
Called and was told I had seat 1F......Oh, sorry but, no. Seems to have been randomly changed, they have no idea. Fortunately, CS was able to return me to my original reserved seat.
So, they are screwing with F and not just Y on the pmVX flights .
Checked return to LAX on 28th. My Trips reservation looked like we were in 2A2C. Went to AS and checked seat map for that flight and yes, again, our seats were available. Called AS again. Got it changed back. (Airbus metal)
(Note: both calls noticed CS sounded very tired)

mikeysf

Eurynom0s

So sorry for the very longwinded story I'm about to drop here but I got absolutely boned on a GGU a month ago and I think what happened to me is extremely relevant to this conversation...

Right before running into multiple instances in a row of this seat renumbering stupidity I got shunted from 1D to 9F (old 9F: so 0 recline) on a DCA-LAX Airbus flight the start of October.

I was MVP Gold until 12/31/2017 so while sitting on an Amtrak train from NYC to Boston on 12/31/2017 I saw that I had my MVP Gold GGUs all sitting around unused (I got MVP Gold from being matched from Elevate Gold when Alaska bought VX, so while in hindsight I probably should have been crediting everything to my Mileage Plan account I was defaulting to just using Elevate since that's what I was familiar with) and decided to try to see if I could use any of them before they expired. So especially since the 60+ day no-fee cancellation policy for non-Gold/75K flyers was still in effect, I decided to take the opportunity to just go down the list of flights I was fairly certain I was taking in 2018 and speculatively book them if I could use my GGU to get myself into first on the booking.

For this DCA-LAX booking, the Google Flights search indicated that my options were basically 5 PM October 7 from DCA, or 5:30 PM from BWI or IAD. I'm pretty sure this was even accounting for connecting flights and that doing a connection instead of a nonstop wasn't going to solve my fundamental problem of 5 PM October 7 simply being too early for me to get to the airport. The 5:30 PM BWI/IAD flights were actually worse for me than the 5 PM DCA flight due to the fact that I would have actually had to have left even earlier for them, so between the ridiculous logistics of getting myself to the airport, the GGU only being able to get me into F on October 8, and having a Marriott free night certificate that would let me spend the night near DCA without dropping any extra cash, I opted for the October 8 morning flight from DCA.

So when I booked the flight on 12/31/2017. I was able to get confirmed into a first class seat.

Then in something like July 2018, I got an email letting me know there'd been an aircraft swap. Still confirmed into first class. This was from a 737 to an Airbus. But I was in row 1 so this shouldn't have mattered. I think around this time I realized that my "aisle aisle aisle" mantra from being used to flying coach was idiocy given the absurd amount of pitch you get with VX Airbus F and switched myself from 1D to 1F.

So then comes 24 hours from checkin. I check in, still confirmed to 1F.

A few hours later I get an email jauntily informing me that I've been upgraded to Premium (9F)!. As you might expect I called Alaska in a massive "... are you seriously doing this right now" state.

First the person I spoke to outright lied to me and said that there was no record that I'd ever been in first class. Then she tried to blame the aircraft swap, which didn't make sense because the seating was still wide open when it went from Boeing-->Airbus over the summer. I even escalated to a supervisor and was bluntly told what amounted to 1) tough .... 2) we're not compensating you for this..

I never did find out what the hell ACTUALLY happened and nothing I was ever told really satisfied me that they hadn't just decided to put some 75K or Million Miler in my seat (I heard "operational needs" a lot during this fiasco), so I'm left to just assume tht's what happened. And as to the woman lying to me about whether I'd ever been in F in the first...when my boarding pass in the app started updating with stuff like the exact gate it STILL didn't update to me not being in 1F until about an hour before the flight.

So overall on the one hand I did get the impression that I ran up against a really absurd edge case here. But on the other hand, I never got a proper explanation (despite explicitly being promised that corporate would be reaching out to me with more info--yeah, that never happened), But your story set me off to give the detailed recounting I just gave me it makes it pretty clear that you can't actually count on these GGUs and that you could ultimately get stuck in a worse seat than if you just booked a coach seat and let yourself go through the upgrade chain (like in my case, I'm sure I could have gotten something better than 9D if they hadn't screwed me on 1F less than 24 hours before departure and had instead just not teased me with the F cabin in the first place). Which seems like a rather significant practical devaluation of MVP Gold if the GGUs aren't actually worth a damn.

Buster CT1K

This sounds like a terrible nightmare. I am sorry to hear this. Alaska is not performing at its best this month.

brettsir

If I remember correctly, when AA reconfigured their 319's they capped F at 8 seats until right before departure. If an old US plane with 12 seats was subbed in last minute there would be 4 guaranteed upgrades, if not everyone got the seat they selected. Wouldn't be surprised if AS took the same approach.

VegasGambler

Given the last fiasco, I would, in fact, be surprised. (pleasantly)

chefraekwon

Got hosed by this last Friday on 1753 SFO-SEA. Booked into seat 3c, confirmed 3c at checkin, get to TSA and load up my BP to see 21d. Gate agent was not helpful / slightly standoffish and we ended up having a little cluster of golds / 75k's in rows 21 and 22. To quote Chaz Michael Michaels from Blades of Glory, the incompetence of their IT team is 'mind bottling'.

Single_Flyer

Same story here. SEA-LAS on Friday (11/9). Originally it was scheduled as a 737-900. I picked Row 6 for me and companion.

Few days before, checked my reservation, and plane was switched to a 320. I moved to Row 9 (advertised as an exit row).

When I got on the plane, it had been renumbered so Row 9 was no longer the exit row. Row 6 was now the first row bulkhead. Those in Rows 3-5 were reseated in the back of the plane.

To make it worse, those in Rows 6 and 15/16 were treated as Premium Economy and given free drink and snack even though those in the exit rows just got lucky. Those of us that were actually in "Premium Seats" got nothing.

beckoa

Ok... this is a new one I haven't encountered. Airbus and Boeings are encountering last minute swaps.

RAD_PDX

Sounds like another good reason to select seats in the first two rows...