Upgraded, Downgraded, Upgraded Again
 

Had a pretty weird thing today on an AS flight. Got the 'you've been upgraded' email for me + kid at about T-2 hours, checked in and printed two F boarding passes. Get to the gate and the kid, but not me, is being paged (which is rather weird because he's four). Instinctively, I check his BP in the app, and while I'm still in F, my kid is now by himself in 22A. Take him up to the counter, and the GA says 'I've only got one upgrade seat available today; do you want it'? I say 'uh, we already both got upgrades; here are the boarding passes I printed out earlier' and hand him our BPs. He says 'oh, OK, one second', goes and does some typing on the computer, and then says 'OK, you're all set, do you want to board now?'. He manually boards us ( e.g. doesn't scan the BP but types in our seat number), and then has us walk behind the podium to cut in line and get on.

Shenanigans? Computer glitch? Sort of wonder if it was shenanigans, because the guy who took our old seat was a pilot in uniform. Wonder if the GA just figured we wouldn't notice that we'd been upgraded and figured he'd downgrade one of us transparently to get the pilot into F. But even then, why separate a four year old from dad?

I vote shenanigans, and they wouldn't have known how old your son was. after getting to the podium, GA probably realized they couldn't insist on separation and reversed their shenanigans.

Shenanigans highly probable.

What airport?

San Diego

Glad the upgrade in the end worked out for you. Back in my days of youngins, I was never so lucky to fly in F with them.

I'm guessing bug in the upgrade system. This happened to me as well while travelling with my SO between SEA and MKE. The SEA gate agent seemed to know exactly what to do while the MKE gate agent was on the phone trying to sort it out for quite some time. I did use a companion certificate on the flights and thought that might have something to do with it. In the end, I did get the upgrades in both directions.

Oh interesting. I also used a companion cert on this flight.

Might be a glitch. I had a situation SJC-JFK where the app showed me as upgraded after I boarded in premium. Hilarity ensued when they seated someone in the FC seat I was upgraded to and gave my premium seat away as well.

Turns out that the flight went out with my seat being in FC on the manifest which caused my meal reservation and elite recognition to evaporate. Oops!

smart move having printed boarding passes. I have issues with upgrades around 1 out of 10 times. I’ve defaulted to taking screenshots of the boarding passes after each upgrade which saved me twice in 2019.

Wow. Did you ask for and get an explanation of why they weren't honoring the upgrade showing in the app? Definitely take a screenshot and send it to AlaskaListens....

It was the people who paid for F who got lucky in those days. One less kid up front.

More seat shenanigans with Alaska. Last 2 out of 3 flights I've had with them they've changed my seat at the last minute without asking me. It irritates the hell out of me. No I don't want to sit in a window seat in the back, I chose that aisle seat 2 months ago, just because some couple decided they can't sit apart for 2 hours isn't my problem, move me back or at very least move me forward and give me an aisle. Half the time I'm met with "I was going to put some money in your travel wallet" I don't want whatever pittance you're going to give me. I would rather have my seat or a comparable one.

Haha. But my kids were charming angels. :)

Was this Airbus or Boeing?

As there are still pmVX config Airbus out there causing issues with seating in main cabin and upgrades.

aS doesn't have a very good system to fix seating, aside from retrofitting the old config cabins.

I've had this exact situation occur as well. I was able to show my listing as upgraded and the seat number. Thank goodness, otherwise they were getting ready to give my first seat away as well, and I'd be flying standing or in the toilet (jk).

QUOTE=brendand;31898700]Might be a glitch. I had a situation SJC-JFK where the app showed me as upgraded after I boarded in premium. Hilarity ensued when they seated someone in the FC seat I was upgraded to and gave my premium seat away as well.

Turns out that the flight went out with my seat being in FC on the manifest which caused my meal reservation and elite recognition to evaporate. Oops![/QUOTE]