1973 Ford Pinto

And you suspect this because ______?

They haven't violated the terms of the CoC yet. If they don't provide a fare difference refund or refuse to rebook you on another flight with F, then they probably are in violation, but merely the fact that someone was downgraded isn't by itself a violation.

If you sue AA you are likely to cost yourself a lot of money and get nothing out of it. AA employs tons of lawyers and no legal action you're going to be able to take will produce any significant pain for AA at the corporate level. Good luck.

nutwpinut

How do you know it was not an air marshall?

Thunderroad

I guess I'm more sympathetic to OP's situation than some here, regardless of what the CoC says. Part of the pleasure of traveling together is sitting together, and once your expectations are for certain travel experience it's disappointing to have to downgrade them.

In addition, there are very few types of businesses in which the company: can unilaterally decide to offer a lesser product than you paid for; not even notify the customer of the change; and leave it to you to sort out how to get what you paid for, find a suitable substitute or get compensated for the lesser product. But such as the state of our domestic airlines' oligopoly.

In any event, OP:

1. You might want to make clear here whether these are mileage or revenue tickets, as that could affect the advice you get.
2. As others have suggested, you also could try seeing whether AA will switch you two to BA F seats.
3. You also could invest in a couple of months of expertflyer membership, at something like $11/month, and set alerts to see whether an F seat opens up on your AA flight. Now, even if it does open up, you still might have to hassle with AA about making it available for your husband if your seats are award tix. But it's worth a try.

Hope it all works out!

Gshumway

That doesn't help very much as the flight is today.

xliioper

While not an equipment type swap, there was an aircraft swap last night --

Sep 28 1:08 AM Gate Adjustment Tail Number Changed From N728AN To N717AN

CloudCoder

I suspect they had to give the seat to a FAM (Federal Air Marshall). When that happens, they are not _allowed_ to tell you why. If you ask them why, they _must_ tell you a lie. Please give AA the benefit of the doubt. If indeed it's a FAM, then AA has no other choice except to lie. If you want to contact a lawyer then talk to your congressman. Most of them are lawyers, and they're the only folks who can fix this issue.

bhrubin

AA can still have taken responsibility and had given us notice...but they didn't, nor any reasonable offer by way of compensation for the unwitting downgrade.

Since they did the same thing to us the first time with the equipment swap, when they could have just pushed us to the later flight and kept us in F, but didn't and just downgraded us both to J and didn't notify us at all, either--I think the pattern of behavior is pretty much obvious. AA behaved badly and doesn't care because it believes there will be no consequences for such bad behavior.

CloudCoder

What do you intend to do? Pick one:

1. Hold out for two F seats on another AA plane, probably on a different day of travel.
2. Ask AA to put you both on another airline (presumably BA) in F
3. One person fly in F, the other fly in J, get a refund for the difference
4. Refuse to fly in two separate cabins. Both fly in J, get two refunds for the difference.
5. Hope that an F seat opens up so that you can both fly in F.
6. (There may also be other options.)

Gino Troian

Ask the person who's sitting in the seat your husband was supposed to sit in how he got confirmed on this flight and see what he/she says!

bhrubin

We have no hope for a change in his seat from J to F. We are expecting that AA will refund more than the fare difference or award miles in recognition of the bad treatment. When you contract for a service and get something less, you should get compensation beyond the difference--or else business has no incentive to ever deliver on what was contracted.

We don't expect AA will do either. Which is why we expect to never fly AA again. A real shame, but then that seems to be the story around AA these days: just USAir in even worse disguise.

eponymous_coward

If it's an air marshal, no they can't, for obvious reasons (AA won't just announce to people "hey, sorry we have to take your seat for the air marshal", plus whichever flights get selected for air marshals are fairly last-minute for other obvious reasons).

That's pretty reasonable as an expectation for a customer service failure, and seems like you should get that; refund per CoC plus some miles for "sorry we hosed you out of the seat" as a customer service gesture for the failure. Let us know if that's what ends up happening.

Might also want to see if that person who's in that seat seems to be not drinking and keeping fairly close attention in the cabin...

aama

My question here is why OP is totally neglecting @Often1 posts?

And to answer to my own question: because OP knows he's right.

The why doesn't matter here, F was oversold-> downgrade to J -> proceed accordingly for refund.

ps. I don't want to twist the knife, but my wild guess is that if you two would've been on the same PNR, this probably wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Thunderroad

Oops. (Head slap.) Thanks.

Antipode

That the seat assignments changed indicates to me that there was likely some other change that caused seats to be reassigned. Perhaps there was an additional schedule change or equipment change, and maybe one that even reverted back to the original rebooked schedule. In addition to some of the ideas of what happened suggested above, it's also possible that somehow during that process only one seat got assigned and the other one remained unassigned. Then, when AA oversold F, it left the husband being the odd one out with no seat assignment and the cabin full.

That said, I agree that at this point it doesn't really matter what happened, and it's a matter of how you're going to deal with it. Trying to get rebooked on another flight in F is an option, but getting AA to fork over for BA F seems like a hard sell (can't hurt to ask though).

Would I be upset in the same situation? You bet! But that doesn't mean AA violated its Contract of Carriage as OP keeps claiming over and over. I suggest taking a look at it, particularly sections on oversales and denied boarding, before going nuclear and wasting time and money on fruitless for legal action. There's some pretty good advice here about what to ask for, what is reasonable to expect, and what AA is actually obligated to provide. I would listen to it instead and make the best of it instead of railing on about how AA is out to get you.

HofstraJet

FWIW, I have had several occasions where my seat was changed allegedly due to an equipment change where the aircraft type and seating arrangement did not change at all. Something in the system must have had two identifiers for identical aircraft and when the switch was made, I was reassigned. Luckily, I caught it through my EF alert and was able to switch to my preferred seat. That said, even EF in this situation may not have helped as the seat your husband had would still have shown as occupied...just not by him.

As others have stated, follow the advice given in this thread about how to deal with it and what to expect and move on. Lesson for next time: check early and often on seating assignments. Sometimes there's nothing you can do, but knowing early at the very least gives you the most options.