daniellam

For any passenger regardless of status, if they check-in late and can't be assigned a seat before check-in closes, then print "GTE" on the boarding pass.

Once flight goes to gate control, then the shuffling can begin. DM gets the PEY seat and non-status gets DMs original seat etc.

QRC3288

One of the small but real operational reasons all airlines prefer to opup in advance is to avoid problems at the gate. Sometimes pax don't like the upgraded, or you're splitting parties, or you're just causing problems despite the good intentions of an upgrade. Do this enough at the gate only, and you overburden the limited staff at the jetbridge and delays are more likely.

This is all a bit overthinking it. I think it's fairly "duh" op-upsdon't get the lounge. If the passenger doesn't agree, op up the next in line. But definitely don't do anything extreme like forcing all op-ups at the gate, and hurt (at a high level) operating performance! That's madness, if well intentioned, just to "solve" a nonexistent problem. Some PEY enabled flights have, cough cough 50+ op ups! You really don't want to process those all at the gate if you can avoid it. Just because of some horribly behaved idiots who demanded the lounge when they were upgraded!

percysmith

But then if at the gate they can be dead certain they need the extra seats

AmD950

I have once booked a spontaneous trip to Kansai (ticketing at 16:30 and jumping out of town 25:45, or 01:45 next day), and I could not have my veggie meal code passed to the registration.

I told the CX lounge agent about this, and a lounge agent gave me a take away box.
She followed me around and introduced me if the food serving was vegetarian or not.
Before I left, she handed me a bag of pantries.

I think if you do have a reason, they don't mind you taking out food from lounge.

Not just about 'c las' or Hong Kong'ers, but I have encountered groups of foreigners smuggling coke zero and cream sodas multiple times.
I just don't know why.

barracuda93

If you imply taking a single can per person (and not stuffing up one’s luggage with free coke zeros), apparently people intend to drink them at the gate or in-flight. What’s wrong about that? It is not an extra expenditure for the airline. You don’t need to hide it, no one from the lounge staff gonna object a can of coke or cream soda being taken out instead of being consumed on a spot.

ernestnywang

Wait, does CX actually do this? I know AA will give priority verification.

xuukgo

Cambo

I think, this GTE concept is called "Standby passenger".......
A passenger simply needs to have a seat assigned, otherwise, there is no boarding foreseen for the passenger.
Being "Late" at check-in simply implies, "To late". And when overbooked and no more seats available, it becomes standby.

AmD950

By the term "Smuggling", I mean not a single can.
They usually take 4-5 and put them in their backpack.

They pack the cans together in a group and chatted loudly in the lounge as well.

OneWorldLoyalist

I usually grab a bottle of water or two out of the F lounge (depending on flight length), but i have never seen someone stuff their backpack with sodas....... that seems altitle excessive!

Also agree with some of the previous posters. Most of my upgrades are done at the gate now adays!

flatlander

Well, elsewhere in Oneworld, if you are in possession of an F boarding pass on BA you can go into the F-only lounges. Last time I tested this was a few months ago when I had an op-up to F when transferring at JFK. My seat allocation disappeared in the mobile app, so I took a guess and went to a counter to fetch a new boarding pass, and then had access as if I was an F passenger. AA have never op-upped me to F (three-class F, that is) but as far as I know you can still get into any of their Flagship, etc, lounges if you have an F boarding pass no matter where it came from.

CX, and everyone else, has scaled their lounge service provision to the number of F seats (haven't they?...) so once your bum will be in an F seat on the aircraft, it can also fit into the F lounge.

It's their train set and they can say how we're going to play with it, but I think no F lounge access on ground after an F upgrade is chiselling.

CXFlyerBoy

barracuda93

I guess it’s not about feeling entitled, it’s about feeling pissed about cheapness of the airline, that charges thousands of bucks for tickets but cannot afford a small marginal cost of extra passenger in the lounge (most of op-ups will have status and thus free access anyway).

QRC3288

no, I just have to strongly disagree here.

The whole point of an op up from the airline is to properly manage revenue in shifting micro demand environments, across a very inflexible fixed assets base. And a very key element to the op up assumption to the airline is there is almost no marginal cost, maybe close to zero except a glass or two of Champagne.

Airlines are an extraordinary tough business. They cannot just reconfigure their planes overnight. So, it is very frequent and accepted within the industry that you have imperfect configurations flying different mission profiles. That is life. For example, the loads to LAX during the Xmas holidays season ex-HKG from December 18-24 might be extremely different from those the week prior, and in a perfect world you have a much more economy and PEY heavy plane flying the missions during Xmas week to LAX. There are hundreds and thousands of these micro situations across the fleet and destination map each year. Of course, such a plane doesn't exist, or if it does it is already allocated elsewhere in your system. So you make do with what you have and use back office assets to sell seats differently.

So what does revenue management do in my hypothetical LAX situation forthcoming? They will oversell economy by more than usual, and not make as many J and F seats for sale. (I was on a flight last week that had 20 op-ups to J. It can be even more in extreme some times.) But, this is the airline industry in the real world. Of course CX cannot get new plane configs overnight so you mustu usestandard industry norms and conventions to solve these problems.

here is the problem. In your proposal, you are asking CX to fork out another $30-50 USD per op up (let's call it $40 to make it easy). If 20 people get a lounge higher than their entitlement, this is nearly 1k USD per flight CX is paying so gratis upgraded can enjoy the lounge too. It is not a sustainable idea, I must say, if you dig into the math. And it may, in fact even screw up some of the savings and yield management for that flight. That your ticket costs a thousand dollars is irrelevant. The profitability of that flight can be under 25k USD, even under 10k in a benign environment. $500-$1000 in additional costs for op ups to hit the lounge is not chump change!! And I think it is very poorly spent and a bad ROI.

What AA has done is upthread is a different situation; the Big 3 US airlines very clearly made decades of mistakes regarding upgrade procedures, and they are finally digging themselves out of a hole. That procedure was bumping all the elites up for free (aka until just recently it was not really an op up on US airlines, rather a "space available" upgrade for elites) and then completely ruining the premium experience in the process for everyone, and ironically taking incentive away for people to pay. This is a little off topic. But back on topic, it doesn't surprise me AA isn't very tuned into this "how to manage intl op ups properly", especially since their domestic operation is simply huge and doesn't permit lounge access, anyway for most flights. It will take time but I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually said no lounge for op ups. The BA example surprises me.

I think your comment about airlines charging thousands of dollars is off the mark. It implies they're living the high life or something, like some tech or financial business. But airlines is a notoriously slim margin business over market cycles, and those high prices cover COSTS! It is not like they're just taking you to the cleaners because of the prices you pay. As I said above, the profitability of some flights in a benign environment can be single digits thousand USD. (Obviously, many times in the cycle flights are losing money!). Short haul flights would be especially terrible. Some regional flights could have 30+ op ups in a very crazy situation, although I agree with you in that case many will already have lounge access. Still, the point holds. It is a lot of money out of CX's pocket, and on thosr short flights especially, it could actually mean the difference between a cash profit and loss for that sector.

barracuda93

I cannot argue on numbers here since I do not have the data (and no time/desire to try dig it out), so let me assume your calculations are correct for the sake of simplicity. If so, then it would still be better for an airline to do things differently. Negative image also has financial costs, which you neglect in your analysis. And CX likely does create a negative impression here (regardless of marginal costs being negligible or substantial). As someone already noted, upgrading at the gate would solve the problem (if needed, they can be pre-assigned in advance, but without letting passengers know). Customers will be happy, airline won't incur extra costs.