How did another passenger get in the middle of our families upgrade queue?
 

How did another passenger get in the middle of our families upgrade queue?

I recently bought 5 SEA-ORD tickets for my family. We are all executive platinum. After purchase I split the record and requested individual upgrades for all of us.

At the airport none of the upgrades had cleared....had the agent put us on the upgrade list. We immediately made it to the top of the list.

The gate monitors showed another passenger had made it between us:
AAaLot Name1
AAaLot Name2
AAaLot Name3
AAaLot Name4
Other Passenger
AAaLot Name5

The Gate Agent was actually interested in this and she could not figure it out. Theoretically [realistically] it was not possible.

Any ideas on how to solve the puzzle?

p.s. only 3 of the upgrades cleared anyway...this would have been a big deal in the case of only 5 upgrade seats

Happens to my wife and I all the time.
If you are not upgraded prior to 3 hours and end up on the airport check in list for upgrades--it does not necessarily keep everyone together.
Since it is a combination of automated and gate agent controlled, it seems to split passengers.
Same ridiculousness when my wife and I upgrade and they give us a window and aisle seat in different rows even if there are plenty of empty seats.
They just do not care about anything that does not bring revenue to them at this point.

That doesn't really make sense though. The current system is done exclusively by time of purchase.

It's not time of purchase, it's time of upgrade request. Is it not possible that while the OP was on the phone to AA, splitting the PNR and making the individual upgrade requests, that "Other Passenger" (presumably also EXP) requested an upgrade? Since the splitting of the PNRs and individual upgrade requests are a manual process by the AAgent, it is certainly conceivable that the five upgrade requests have different time stamps. In the unlikely event that someone else's upgrade request happens to be after family member #1 but before family member #5 then they should be between #1 and #5 on the upgrade list. I'm not saying that's necessarily how it happened in this case, but it's a feasible and legitimate way that it could happen.

That makes sense. And yes, I meant to say request, not purchase.

If it was done the way you say, yes, that's possible. But if the upgrades were requested at the time of purchase, then when the record is split, the upgrade request time should carry over from the original record. If it was done that way, I don't know why the request time didn't carry over, seems like operator error to me.

The way the OP described the situation was that the upgrades were requested after the purchase time during the PNR split:

I agree as well. I'm just not sure which operator erred as this should all be automated. I wonder if, when they split the records, the original request time has to be reinserted into the records not on the original PNR. The rules say that it carries the original request time, but making it happen on the new records may be manual. If so, it's quite possible that an error was made in keying in one of them, maybe only a couple of hours, and the interloper slipped in that way. No real way to know unless one of our knowledgeable GA friends chimes in.

Cheers.

Yes, if it was done in that sequence, that definitely explains it. Each of the 5 PNRs would have a different upgrade request time, and if another EXP was in the process of ticketing and requesting an upgrade at the same time, they would be interleaved. It just seems odd to do it that way - much more difficult and resulting in later request times - and no benefit that I can see.

Upgrades could not be requested at time of purchase (AA.com only allows 2 people to upgrade at the same time).

However the upgrades request were done minutes after purchase (as soon as the agent split the records).

I know it is possible some other exec plat was purchasing at the same time time....but is that really realistic?

Absolutely. Having worked for an airline and then flown millions of miles afterwards, I have seen this happen all the time. Just this week, I saw an empty seat on the seat map and when I went to grab it, it was gone. Just like that. So in your case, it is entirely realistic that other people had transactions for the same flight around the same time.

Less likely if you happened to be booking say 5 months out, but more likely two weeks out. When did you book?

Once again--the airport upgrade list is a new list--and while it is supposed to depend on time of purchase--it does not always work that way.

What would make it work otherwise?

Just to be clear - it is supposed to be based on time of request - purchase has nothing to do with it as stated above.