isabeloh

Ticketed in (paid) F MCO-PHL on 4/22 for a business trip. Seat assignment went from 2D since January to none with the "We’re unable to assign seats for everyone. Please check back or we’ll assign seats at the airport." warning over the past weekend. All seats in F now show occupied/blocked. Best course of action? Wait a bit to see if equip/schedule change forthcoming, or make a call? Thanks.

CMK10

Checked in for tomorrow's RDU-CLT-MCO routing at T-24. At T-22, the upgrade for CLT-MCO cleared and I was assigned 1F. I don't like bulkheads so I tried to move to 4F. It didn't work on my laptop. I tried on my phone and it still didn't work. I called AA and the agent told me that the flight was already under airport control. Seems a bit odd for it to be under airport control 22 hours in advance.

RogerD408

You might try HUCA. Some agents will say things that aren't really true to get out of doing the work. Worth a try?

iadisgreat

This happened to me last week, same response from Twitter. It cleared up a few hours later and I could change my seat. Who knows.

TravelinSperry

I recently noticed that seat costs to upgrade to main cabin select or other favored seat areas increased in price as the departure date got closer. For example, exit row was $78 and today (30 hrs before departure) was $85. I didn't realize they had yield management working on seat upgrades. Is this new?

paddock_rat

This post is going to be lengthy, but it is the sum of the details that tell the story.

Last week, my wife and I held paid first class tickets with preassigned seats together on AA 79 from LHR to DFW. I checked-in online with no problems other than for some unknown reason, I could not get boarding passes online. It was curious, but I did not think much about it at the time given of course that it is not uncommon to have difficulty with the AA website.

Upon arriving at LHR, the agent at check-in told us she could not give us boarding passes as we no longer had assigned seats, and FC was oversold. The agent consulted with her supervisor, but both claimed to be totally baffled. "Never seen this before." My blood pressure immediately went up about 20 points. The agent said that we would either receive new seat assignments sometime before boarding or...(be bumped from the flight?). I asked how our confirmed assigned seats with paid FC tickets could be taken away from us. No answer. She told us to check with the agents at the First Class Lounge for a resolution.

We proceeded to the Lounge and I asked an agent to resolved this. She said she could offer no resolution or explanation. She told us to work it out with the supervisor when we went to the gate. So we spent an hour in the FC Lounge not knowing whether we would have seats or even be denied boarding.

We went to the gate when it opened about an hour before departure and spoke with the gate supervisor. Initially he was noncommittal and unapologetic. After some further delay, he told us we now had two seats in business class. After I firmly objected, he finally said his final offer was the two BC seats and two $1000 vouchers. He also claimed that our tickets were either purchased with miles or upgrades using miles as some sort of justification for our seats being taken away from us. I fly a lot, and often use miles. Since I purchased the tickets weeks ago, I could not recall that these round trip tickets were purchased, BC from DFW to LHR and then FC return to DFW, for $9927 each. So I was not able to challenge the gate supervisor's erroneous claim. But I continued to press him on how my assigned FC seats could be taken away and given to someone else. He then claimed that the reason was for "security," and said he was not allowed to tell me the details. Blood pressure up another 20 points.

I told the gate supervisor that the difference in the fare between FC and BC was certainly a lot more than $1000 and if we were forced to accept BC, I was owed difference in the fares in cash, not a voucher. He strongly replied, "It doesn't work that way." Given that these were paid tickets and the difference in fares is a clear measure of what they were offering vs. what I would have paid for BC. Was this strategy intentional andt an attempt at fraud on the part of AA?

Then in a conversation a few minutes later, the gate supervisor told me a different and revealing story. "There are some customers that we must accommodate." Huh? So the security explanation was a lie? Further, you must accommodate some passengers by bumping other passengers holding paid FC tickets? The supervisor told me he would issue the BC boarding passes and the two $1000 vouchers before boarding commenced. Another raise in blood pressure.

However the gate supervisor apparently came to realize that I was likely going to press the matter later. (Good insight!) About five minutes before boarding, he approached and gave me two boarding passes for first class seats, one of which was for an originally assigned seat, and another FC seat, but not together.

After we boarded, I was sitting next to the passenger who had the other seat we were originally assigned. I asked him about how he came to be sitting in that particular seat. He said he originally was assigned a different seat in FC that also had gone away without explanation. AA had offered him a $1000 voucher to accept a BC seat. He declined, so they ended up giving him one of the seats that had been assigned to me. So somehow this was a passenger who AA accommodated at my expense. Blood pressure now off the scale. I also asked the flight attendant why our seats had been reassigned to others. She said it was for a security reason and therefore she could not disclose the reason. So perhaps "security" is the explanation (lie) that AA has instructed their staff to provide when they don't want to disclose the real reason for making changes adverse to their passengers.

I purchased the two First Class tickets for our return to top off a wonderful five-day getaway to the English Cotswolds district. The Cotswolds exceeded exceptions. Then came the AA experience from hell that ruined the First Class experience. I have written to AA Customer Relations and asked for enough AAdvantage miles to make a similar First Class trip later on an Anytime award. I expect the response to be that they ended up providing FC seats so they owe me nothing. But of course they provided the FC seats only after suggesting we might be bumped from the flight, then trying to bump us back to BC without fully compensating us in cash for the difference in fares and only after ruining what should have been a great travel experience on AA.

A couple other facts. There was no change in equipment. Another LHR to DFW flight earlier in the day had been cancelled, so that was probably the root cause of the situation AA faced. But if so, throwing my wife and me under the bus as part of their solution to the problem and then lying about it says a lot about a cynical approach to customer service.

Does anyone have any experience or insights to offer regarding this situation?

JDiver

Welcome to FlyerTalk.

Sorry about the blood pressure, but you are entirely incorrect in your premises throughout much of your post.

It’s not about AA, it’s about USDHS (TSA). 99.99% you were FAMmed. Federal Air Marshall’s can demand and will be given F seats, others shuffled around and booted out to accommodate them. There is no way around that, and AA agents are not allowed to tell you FAMs have displaced you. The GA and FA probably went farther in disclosing the reason behind your displacement than they probably should have, but that disclosure clinched the reason was FAMs. “National security” and all that.

Fortunately, you apparently only accosted another hapless displaced passenger pressing for explanations; had you accosted and created a flap with a FAM, it’s possible you could have been removed from the aircraft and experienced further difficulties. And if FAMs want a pair of seats in F, neither you nor AA has any recourse. AA hates it, to say the least, as it’s upsetting to passengers and deprives AA of revenue.

You were ultimately seated in First. Your choice to allow the issue to “ruin” your trip seems to me to be a poor choice. I hope AA Customer Relations offers you miles compensation for your troubles, but frankly I’d drop expectations to 10,000 miles at the very most, as you ultimately were able to advocate successfully for you and your travel companion to get what you paid for. Congratulations for that.

“The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the supervision of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the United States Department of Homeland Security.”

paddock_rat

Partial explanation and makes sense. But if I was FAMed, what about the low-dollar voucher offer rather than offering the actual difference in the ticket prices? It appears that AA is passing along part of the costs of carrying the marshals to their displaced passengers.

paddock_rat

Also, do not paid tickets take priority over award tickets and upgrades? It is hard to believe that there were not two passengers in FC that were not flying on awards or upgrades.

JDiver

Federal Air Marshall’s. They take priority over any passenger.

777lover

I see u are fairly new here (at least posting wise), but there are formulas that AA uses (well kind of) and since you were coming out of the EU, u might have a claim under EC 261. But when u say "difference in price". what are ur comparison? ie, there are many F fares and many business fares, so its hard for a GA to calculate on the spot. Contact CR.

Also, I take it you didn't see ur lack of seats on the web or app prior to getting to the airport. Always check you reservations and when you see something like this, call and ask for a re-accomodation into another flight as a FAM or FAMs can pick any seats they want and AA can do nothing about it. FAMs are a "must accommodate."

justhere

I'm pretty sure the voucher wasn't in lieu of the fare difference. That was simply a "sorry for the inconvenience". You would still have been eligible for the fare difference but you don't get that right there and then. It has to be calculated etc and then a refund is issued.

UpgradeMe

You lost me at this point.

mauve

If the original post is accurate, a gate supervisor specifically stated the fare difference wouldn’t be refunded. I have no idea if he actually has that authority, or if it’s a new AA policy, etc.

Antarius

they were wrong. Cabin downgrades regardless of reason will result in a fare refund. Just not at the gate