Tonight on Aa2035 I had a first class seat from an upgrade. I selected 4D. The boarding pass says first and the seat selector showed it in first, but when I get to the plane I'm in the bulkhead coach. Has this happened to anyone? I selected the seat about an hour before the flight so I'm guessing it was a last minute equipment change. I'm not expecting anything from the airline really but I'll know in the future to not select the last row of first again.

Bigger question: ... is this flight doing?

I don't know. I deplaned and decided to drive. Between the potential weather delay, the coach/first seat blunder, the baby assigned 4e, and the four duplicate seat assignments in row 4 that nobody could figure out, they exceeded my incompetence quota for the day.

Flightaware shows that they circled CLT twice and then went off to CAE. Looks like weather at CLT prevented a safe landing there, but the jibberish below is hard to decipher.

Pvd 728p 5
cae 1029p 1100p
clt d d11 936p 1039p c4
jax c10 1158p
3pvd/etd1938 lae-previous delay of this aircraft *1824
4pvd/out1933 off1957 *1857
7pvd/auto reaccom dly flt completed see n*p1aa2035pvd26sep *2103*crcymg
2cae/in2257 *2202
3cae/etd2342 lae-previous delay of this aircraft *2202
7cae/auto reaccom dly flt completed see n*p1aa2035cae26sep *2235*crcymg
1clt/ovr clt to cae eta2230 awd-air traffic/weather delay at the destination *2105
2clt/pre0037 *2202
3clt/etd2345 wxl-delay due to wx conds at boardpoint *2220
7clt/auto reaccom dly flt completed see n*p2aa2035clt26sep *2221*crcymg
4clt/out2342 *2242
2jax/pre0052 *2242

Well, these ARE the bozos who ran America West! One time, an America West aircraft had a mechanical at the gate after we had boarded. We deplaned and then the gate agents had us board the new aircraft in ALPHABETICAL order -- had this happen twice on America West and NEVER on a real airline.

This is happening more and more lately as not all (same model) aircraft are set up internally in the same manner.

A 319 might have row 1 and 2 FC and then start coach with row 7 or 8.
Others have 4 rows of FC. If you get the seat for one, but the other metal shows up and you are out of luck.

You are correct that you should always choose row 2, as they all have 2 rows.

Ok that makes sense. CAE is my home airport and there's no PVD-CAE direct flight. Looks like it was originally a PVD-CLT flight, which diverted to CAE due to weather, then needed to get back to CLT to continue on to JAX. I feel for those in on board, having a 4-hr longer journey than planned, and those at CLT waiting on this aircraft, since they didn't even depart until after they were supposed to be at JAX.

Wonder if they kept the pax on board at CAE or let them out and/or bus them to CLT. I've had AA pay for a cab from CAE to CLT before as part of VDB compensation.

If they were such bozos, they would not have been capable of taking America West from what it was to now the world's largest airline. They took over US and then AA, thats not the acts of bozos.

Also, what you described actually can make sense depending on the computer technology being used at the time. It may have been easier to just re-board using a passenger manifest in alphabetical order than have to unload the whole plane in the computer and re-board that way.

But some planes First starts are row 3 ;-)

I'm confused. Was the OP n a 319, if so, there are only two rows to select from in F. Or was the a/c downgraded from a 320 to a 319 and the OP got unlucky because he chose the last row in F and was bounced back to Y?

My guess is equipment swap from an A321 (F is rows 1-4, Y starts at row 5) to an A320 (F is rows 1-3, Y starts at row 4) and everyone in the last row of F got hosed. It could also account for the seat duplicates.

I don't believe there are any A319s with three rows of F left anymore.

Don't blame you.

I hope the OP is asking AA for a refund.

2035 seems to be normally an A320, so 3 rows of F.

My guess is that dispatch messed up and plugged the wrong plane's tail number into this flight, Before that got fixed, "upgrades" were processed. Here's why I think that:

Flightaware and Flightradar24 both show A321 N553UW on PVD-CLT (diverted to CAE) last night:
https://www.flightradar24.com/flight/aa2035
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N553UW

However, if a plane showed up with row 4 in coach and a baby managed to be assigned 4E, which doesn't exist on any type of AA A321, then something else actually flew it. Which aircraft? I can't tell, but almost certainly an A320 as is scheduled for this flight. FlightAware, in spite of claiming an A321 flew it above, also shows it operated by an A320 (but doesn't provide a way I know of to find which tail #):
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...328Z/KPVD/KCLT

Very messy, and would definitely muck with seat assignments. I've seen this sort of screw up way more since moving to the AA reservations system last year, and usually involving A320 series narrowbodies. The safest bet is, as mentioned, to choose row 1 or 2, which if course isn't always possible. Whether this is a people or IT screw up, or both, I don't know.

I think most here know this, but there are no remaining AA A319s with anything other than 2 rows of F. But I'm not sure how that got into this thread.

Thats funny.......seriously one of the funniest posts I have read in a while. "incompetence quota"----100% I'm stealing that line from you to be used in my daily life.

~TG