jrhone

I am not 100 percent sure , I will research a little bit further for you though.

I am pretty sure that the main factor is if the passenger record is marked 'split' or 'no split' . If marked 'no split' then the sytem bases your companions place on the list based on your status, and will upgrade both of you at the same time if the seats are avaliable. So if you dont want to split and stay sitting together rather than one of you taking the upgrade, then the system auto rolls to the next person in the list.

If you are prepared to split then you as the elite member are given the seat, the companion is then put back on the list based on their own status.

Above is incorrect, if you prepared to split and are given a seat, then your companion becomes the next person on the list for an upgrade.

Dont quote me on that just yet, I will research further this afternoon.

nbevan

jrhone, many thanks for your very informative post.

Consensus here is that if upgrades don't clear in advance, they have to be requested again at the airport, when priority within status is determined by check in time (rather than time of reactivating the request at the airport).

We have also had reports of connecting passengers getting a higher priority on the stand by list. Do you know how that works? Is priority just based on the time you are issued the connecting boarding pass (either at the originating airport or on arrival at the connecting airport)? Or do connecting passengers get a higher priority than passengers originating locally? Does it make a difference if connecting from a domestic or international flight?

mvoight

He made no mention of the check-in time in determining the order of upgrade
He indicated what would happen if you were in line and requested an upgrade and another person in line requested an upgrade. Check-in time is important and should be mentioned. This is why FT people often check-in 24 hours before the flight, as it maximizing their chances for an upgrade when they come under airport control.

nbevan

Suppose you had not previously requested an upgrade. I am inclined to think that your priority would still be determined by check in time, as the airport system does not seem to know whether you had a request in your original booking.

RxCapt

.....

jrhone

When I made the original post, I only included standbys, upgrades and over sales. There are many other codes and acronyms, none of them will put anyone above an Elite or the OS/ UPG/R though so I did not include them, I realize I should have now, so here we go.

Disrupted Travel passengers: If a disrupted passenger cannot be confirmed on another flight then they will be listed on the PALL list as an OS. As stated before, your number according to your status follows. So a regular discount revenue passenger would be just OS, an EXP would be OS1; PLT would be OS2, and Gold OS3.

Through or ‘T’ passengers do get more priority but only within their own tier and only on the original or segments leading to a final connection. As an example lets say you are a PLT checking in at DFW for a flight to STL and then connecting to RDU. If you wanted to go standby on the earlier flight from DFW to STL, you would be on the list as a R1T on the first segment and as a R1 on the second segment from STL to RDU. As you are already checked in for that flight from STL to RDU, your place on the standby list is awarded on the time you checked in at DFW. Now let us say that a Gold Passenger is checking in at STL for the flight to RDU and then has a connection from STL to LGA. He will be a R3T and you will still be R1 so you will still have priority over the through passenger for the standby flight.

T also applies to OS passengers; you could be OS1T, OS2T or OS3T depending on your status.

Sabre will automatically place a T on any connecting passenger on the PALL list. A passenger with an international connection will not get a higher priority over a passenger with a domestic flight. Finally , you will never be a T on your final segment.

I also found one other thing that might be of interest, apologies to those of you who might already know this. If for example you made a reservation in July for travel in December and you happen to change status in September, and you requested to be put on the auto upgrade list, then you will need to call in and update your request.

The reason for this is that reservations contain a ‘banner’ indicating what status you had at the time of the reservation. This ‘banner ‘will not auto update if you make the change from Gold to Platinum or Platinum to Executive Platinum. So your request for that reservation will be based on the Status you had at that time. Call to the help desk will fix the issue and your upg request will be listed according to your status.

I am also not sure that you have to request the UPG again at the airport as I have often had passengers ask me if their upgrade had cleared and I when I looked at the PALL list their name was on there, still waiting for the upgrade.

(edit)I have since found out otherwise. The system will keep trying to process your upgrade until 3 hours before departure. If the upgrade is not avaliable during that time, then it is suggested that you use the online check in to get your 'timestamp' and requet to be placed on the standy by list at the airport. My apologies for the incorrect information.

An agent can look at any pall list for any flight on AA from any airport, they can also put you on any list for any AA flight from any airport. So if you want to catch your original flight but stand by for an earlier connection then the agent who checks you in at your point of origin can do this for you. (edit : this is for standby only, upgrade requests can only be made from the board city)

One last point. The issue of an airport taking 'control' of a flight. This is a bit of a myth as the only control status on any flight is 'PDC' (post departure control). Whilst seats may be blocked by an agent working a flight that day, there is no point in time when an airport takes control of a flight. Reservations, Premuim Services may block seats off , but all these seats automatically unblock 15 minutes before departure time.

It is possible that someone gets the impression that a flight is under airport control when requesting a seat that has been blocked by another Gate agent at another airport. Just for arguments sake lets say that you are checking in at DFW for a flight to ORD , with a connection from ORD to DCA. You want an Exit row or a bulkhead seat out of ORD and request this be changed by the agent in DFW. If the agent in ORD has blocked the seat with a certain block type then only that person can unblock it. The unwritten agreement beween agents is that if an agent has blocked a seat on the flight they are working, then an agent at another airport should never unblock it . It might have been blocked for a passenger with a disability who had another flight cancelled.

From the moment the flight is listed at 330 days out the flight is open to res , airport agents , tariff, ops, customer service, dispatch or any other department., up until the gate agent puts the flight in PDC within 15 miutes of departure.


As always, any questions , please feel free to ask.

nick_marquise

jrhone, Welcome to FT!!

I have a feeling you will become an asset!!

Thanks,
Nick

jrhone

Thank you, its actually a good way for me to learn things too, any time I see a question on here that I dont know the answer to, I go look it up and try to figure out the correct answer. Good learning tool !

Thanks.

Grasshopper

One more point - if you are an AA employee with JetNet access, you can view the priority list from the comfort of your home computer.

Comes in handy.

jrhone

Indeed you can . I cant remember if it only lists the non revs or both types of passengers.

Top Tier

Thank you for all your comments jr. It's always good to have an insiders perspective, I value your participation here .

I commend your efforts at combating myth-informAAtion here at FT, and laud your quick "accurate-izing" (am i allowed to make up my own words?) of your post(s).

In that spirit, may I suggest editing your original post to reflect these corrections?

My concern is that the title of this thread may attract people seeking information on standing by for a sticker upgrade at the airport, yet post#1 of this thread omits mention of the crucial need to ask again at the airport for the upgrade. It also contradicts what you've posted above regarding the time stamp of C/I determining allocation of upgrades vs place in line at the airport.

jrhone

Top Tier, thanks for your input and comments , it is appreciated !

I will sit down over the next day or two and either edit in all the corrections suggested or re write the post with some other little things I found while researching.

Thanks again.

mvoight

Here's one place, where it talks about it when you can checkin for your roundtrip flights Read the last sentence in the blue box.

http://www.aa.com/content/urls/checkin.jhtml

I will have to find the one where it doesn't mention return flights.
Logically, of course, the statement at the link above should mean that if you can get priority on your return flight, then you also get it on the outbound, but AA didn't write that section that way.

mvoight

Even if you check in online, you still need to request the upgrade at the airport, if it is under airport control. Your comment makes it sound like you either request it at the airport or check in online.

nbevan

So, do the rules for T apply in the same way to UPG1T, UPG2T etc?

There is a problem that since you can't check in online when you have an itinerary including an international flight, your UPG priority on the domestic sectors would otherwise be lower than people who checked in 24 hours ahead.

So if you were flying DEN-ORD-LHR, despite the inability to check in online, would the T status put you at the top of your UPG group for DEN-ORD? On your return, would the ORD-DEN connection also give you T priority for your eVIP LHR-ORD?

But from what you say T status would not apply on the final ORD-DEN segment, so your UPG priority on that segment would necessarily be behind anyone who checked in 24 hours ahead? (For this reason some people have recommended buying domestic and international legs as separate fares, so that you can still do OLCI for the domestic flights.)