Beachfun71

I’ve been flying TUP-BNA-ORD lately. Since the first leg is on Contour Air, I have to check in at the airport. Even though I get my AA boarding pass for the second leg, I have to “re-check in” at BNA to get my name added to the waitlist. It’s a pain, and when delayed at TUP, other upgrades clear before I can get added to the list. I don’t know of a work around. I tried using the app chat, and they were not able to help me. Agent at BNA wasn’t able to offer a suggestion for the future, either.

gmax58

Ended up with a similar situation today for MEM-DFW-TUL: I had a cascading (maintenance) delay, so I decided to move to a 3 pm flight on Envoy. I got to the gate and then checked in on the app since I didn't see my name on the upgrade list - and then asked the gate agent to do so. (She was unable to do so without "charging a fee" and then she said she needed to check with a supervisor. I never heard back about it and never was added to the list.) I didn't figure I'd get it since I am Plat but it's weird how wonky this is when flights get delayed.

As a side note, it's been weird - my flights have either been on time (within 15 minutes) or delayed by 2+ hours through rolling delays - nothing in between!

nismo240ssx

How do you like that itinerary vs driving to MEM? I Aldi have an office I visit in tupelo & the 2-hour Drive plus avoiding the CR2 both seem like nice benefits

merlin90

My wife is flying PUJ-ORD later today. She is Platinum. Her parents are also on the same booking; they are AAdvantage members but have no status. She has checked in and got her boarding pass but is not showing on the upgrade list. I have advised that she call AA, but is there any particular reason that she wouldn't be showing? My only thought was that it could have something to do with her parents' lack of status, but I don't really know.

A supplemental question: If she is successful in getting put on the waitlist, can she be linked with one (or both) of her parents so that they can be on the list too, or do they need status for that?

JJeffrey

If there are 3 pax on the same reservation then no one will be put on the upgrade waitlist automatically, including your wife. That is why she is not showing up.

You can only upgrade one companion, so when you have more than 2 pax on a reservation the system defaults to no upgrade requests because it doesn't know which companion to upgrade.

She can call AA and have them split the PNR into her plus whatever companion she wants to try to upgrade, and then they will both be on the list.

merlin90

That makes sense, thank you.

One last question: If there only one available seat but she is on the list with a companion, could she be upgraded on her own or will the system just upgrade the first single passenger on the list?

Hardlanding

I was traveling yesterday in paid first and had the same problem. I was traveling with my wife and our first flight was 5 hours late due to one flight attendant becoming ill prior to flight. A replacement had to be flown in from Charlotte. We missed our connection. Our new connection only had one first class seat. I gave this to my wife and watlisted myself (EP). I had to talk to one gate agent and three phone agents to finally find myself on the list. When I saw the list, I was #3 despite emphasizing to all of the agents that I was paid first class. Finally, an agent in the admiral club properly entered the info and I became number 1. The kicker here is there were 12 available first class seats. She could not explain why I did not get the seat when I rescheduled that morning.

S80

By default, the system will upgrade the first single passenger on the list if there is only one seat available. I've seen the system upgrade #1 and #4 (when #2 and #3 were presumably together given same last names) at ~8 hours before departure when there were only 2 seats available. If you get to the gate as #1 and #2 for 1 seat, you can ask the GA to upgrade one of you, but that needs to be done manually.