newgrad071

How often have people seen first go out with an empty seat despite multiple people on the upgrade list? Flew on AA3748 from ORD-MSP yesterday and despite multiple people on the upgrade list, 7 or 8 if I recall correctly, we departed with an empty seat in first class.

Seat map showed one seat open, asked GA who claimed 'first had boarded full'. Even so I waited until the all groups/all rows announcement and then boarded. I sat near the front of Y and could clearly see an open seat in the first row. More than a little annoying...

Update: Some of the AA insiders here on FT confirmed the seat was not occupied and was functioning.

brp

I once saw a case that I thought was that. Ended up being a short person in that seat.

Cheers.

frubio2012

That has happened to me as well. Made me quite upset, it was an MD80 flight DFW-IND. I always get my upgrade on the IND-DFW trip but never on the way back.

AAFA

That happens and it also happens that the seat is placarded in the log book and they are unable to fix it so they are unable to sell it.

I have never seen an agent not process an upgrade if someone was supposed to get one and if a seat was not broken. I have experienced a zillion people who get on and tell me 20 times they are next on the list and where they are sitting, as though the upgrade list and seating chart are a mysterious secret. Those are usually the people who are 20th on the list.
FYI to all, that's annoying behavior and sets you apart from the word go. It puts you up there with the guy who puts his hat in an empty overhead bin and freaks out if you try to move it.

thedoorchick

I've never seen it either, but with all due respect, that doesn't mean it has never happened. I'm sure it's extremely rare, but certainly believable to have occurred from time to time.

ESpen36

Perhaps the seat was INOP.

Or perhaps the GA behind on paperwork and didn't have time to process an additional upgrade before needing to close the door.

Or perhaps the GA was too lazy to process the upgrade.

Anything is possible.

newgrad071

I'd give myself a 95% confidence interval that the seat was not occupied by a person. My first thought was maintenance issue too, but it looked to be fine shape on my way out. The flight is under an hour, I just complained last week to AA so I'm going to let it slide (don't want to lose any eagles ). Also I am not 100% positive there wasn't a good reason for it.

JumboD

Not quite the same situation, but I recall being on ORD-LAX where Y was oversold and they were asking for volunteers, but F left with an empty seat (actually, may have been two).

sica4

I don't know what is more surprising, AA would rather payout a voucher than op-up people, or that ORD-LAX didn't have enough elites requesting upgrades to fill F.

JumboD

Well, this was sort of an odd night all around. It was the last flight out on a Sunday (I think), the second to last, which I was on, had a mechanical delay so I was protected onto this one (even though it was oversold) and was told there were something like a total of five upgrade requests for seven seats but that they couldn't clear them yet due to the oversell, or something like that.

Not only don't I understand them not oping people up, I don't understand why some paying F customers weren't also requesting protection on this flight since it was slated to leave before ours once the delay was factored in.

But I really didn't care since my flight had been F2 A1 P1 for days and I cleared into F on the new one .

MARINFLL

My guess is that the seat was broken. They may look fine, but if they don't recline (esp on a 76 or 77) they will not fill the seats (probably because of the complaint factor).

JumboD

I'm going to pull out and wave my bull$hit flag; a 777 or 767 would not be operating this route, and if the seat was inoperable it would have been clearly marked as such (I've seen this), otherwise what's to prevent someone in an aisle seat from deciding they'd like to move to a window and all of a sudden having the bottom of the seat fall out from under them.

sluggoaafa

The flight does show that there was an open seat available, however, the pax list does show there were 3 F pax who didn't make it for this flight. So, there was either someone shown at time of departure that they had checked in, or as AAFA pointed out, there could have been a seat (1A) placarded as being INOP, so no one could have been seated in that seat. Since this flight is operated by Eagle/Connection, I can't view any mx issues for the plane.

sica4

They most definitely do not fly 767s or 777s from ORD-MSP, I wish.

mvoight

It is not a rare event that upgrades don't go to people who have already boarded, or go to the wrong people. I don't see how this is "annoying" because someone is trying to tell you they might be upgraded. Additionally, when people on the upgrade list board, their name drops off the upgrade monitor. So, it is possible for multiple people to think they were next. This is confusing and AA should fix this so the monitor displays the actual order, even if the person has boarded. If AA would fix that problem, this passenger behavior that annoys you might just go away.