It worked, sort of, I think....

So, Joey The Gold sits bleary-eyed at his computer at 4:45 AM, collecting data for his 7:20 AM flight. No happy EUA e-mail from the nice folks at CO **sigh**. The ITN site reads A0 F0 ** Double sigh**. The back of the bus for Joey The Gold again. Might as well get the best coach seat left after being vacated by those newly annoited to FC; Joey The Gold sleepily pulls his itinerary from CO's eTicket site and clicks on "View/Change" seat. The site "mistakenly" pulls up the FC seats (C'mon, bear with me here, it is 4:45 AM). Joey the Gold impishly clicks on his FC seat of choice, even though his itinerary still says seat 18C when it was first opened. No dice, Joey The Gold cannot select a FC seat and...ACK! Horror-of-Horrors! The devilish CO eTicket site has removed his 18C coach seat upon refreshing! Joey The Gold has NO SEAT on this flight now!

Off to the airport, frantically calling in the car from a cell phone in order to retrieve the "misplaced" coach seat. **Triple sigh**. The first agent was MUCH less than interested. "The seat map has been pulled. Airport check in only. Click". "Uhmmm, thank you". Yes, ALWAYS call back. The second agent, almost as dis-interested as the first, provided one additional essential piece of information. "Airport check-in only. You've been upgraded to FC. Click".

YIPEEE! Joey The Gold gets his cinnamon bun slathered with melting butter!

So, it seems that the seats dumped to F at 3.5 hours, EUA ran at 3.0 hours, but no seat assinments were given by EUA (by pretending to book a FC ticket at 4:45 AM, I saw all 11 unsold FC seats from yesterday were still available). Thus, it seems the EUA is modifying your "class of service" at 3.0 hours, but does not give you a seat until you check in at the airport, which is where I received my FC seat. In this way, if a full fare FC passenger buys a seat before you get there, you may lose it if you are the last in FC to check in, No?

Please discuss amongst yourselves.




[This message has been edited by Joey (edited 03-05-2002).]

Nope.

They'd only let enough A pax buy tickets such that all the people booked in F without seat assignments can still get seats.

Really? That sounds awfully nice of CO....

Joey glad to hear it worked for you!

A few things:

1) if you wanted to confirm that you were in FC, when you are in the "My Itineraries" section of the CO website you will see the class of service listed next to the flight in the details section... farther down the page from the seat selection link... FYI any change is *instant* there's no lag. So if you use miles to upgrade or get EUA, etc the c.o.s. will jump from say "Economy (Q)" to "First (F)." Just another way to confirm what you were told.

2) It does not have to be a full fare FC to grab an A seat. I can be a Gold/Plat full-fare Y getting an upgrade from the "A" bucket

3) Please observe a momemnt of silence for me later today. A0 F0 and I didn't get the u/g... I will put the black bunting on the house when I get home.

But, to be honest, I am not *angry* at CO. To the best of my knowledge, the release of seats was equitable and they were able to get people to pay full-fare Y (or A) for those seats... more power to 'em.

I am not a pr*ck, and I do realize that they're running a business. I get very angry when on the day of travel it is A9 F0, but this flight has been A0 F0 for 2+ days and it a classic "business route."

EDIT: a glimmer of hope... ITN just changed to A1 F0... I guess someone took an earlier flight...

[This message has been edited by EWR-COflyer (edited 03-05-2002).]

I find it interesting that when you went to change your seat, it lost your original coach seat assignment online.

I had the same problem when I was traveling with a companion on a 9+ hour international flight.

Clicked on "change/view seat assignment" online, my seats showed up (day of the flight). I clicked on "return to itinerary", my seat assignment was GONE. (I had beautiful seats in the second row of coach)

Called CO right away. "I'm sorry those seats are held for airport checkin". This was 12 hours before the flight. Nobody could reassign the seats!

Got to the airport 3 hours in advance. My seats were gone. Flight was full, wound up (fortunately next to my companion) in a lovely NON RECLINE seat for 9 hours.

Their automated systems get better each day!

Maybe one day I'll get lucky and one of their E Check-in machines will print me out a boarding pass for EWR-HNL (Newark to Honolulu) instead of EWR-BOS (Newark to Boston)

Since you mentioned it AndrewNYC, here is an update on my lost seat. Turns out that my entire return trip ticket was lost as well! Even though I never accessed this data on-line (I was only looking at the outbound information).

I spoke with a very nice (but handcuffed) agent. I now have a cozy middle seat for my return flight unless I am upgraded. Oh well, at least I got back on the flight (I wouldn't have, if I did not happen to immediately check my itinerary upon landing).
A word to the wise: NEVER view/modify your seat from the CO website. When I called WE CARE, they said as much: "Please call us and we wll be happy to make any seat modification for you".

Good luck on getting that upgrade!

I've only called the WE-CARE number once to mention to them such a problem (Hey, maybe they would like to know about it so they could FIX the problem.) Wasn't looking for compensation. The few people I spoke with there made it out to be a problem with me. I just don't have the time to be bothered now especially if they don't care.

It would be great if customer service went back to the days where they would tell you what they COULD DO FOR YOU. Instead of saying what they can't do for you. (Maybe they can hire a few reps from AMEX to manage the "elite" lines? ;-) )

why not just sleep in an extra half hour and not check itn and assume everything will be done correctly? i can only assume being so proactive will help in rare instances and, if that is the case, i would rather sleep in.

i would enjoy the flight so much more rested in coach then grumpy in first class anyway, esp. when "managing" the situation probably won't assist anyway.

[This message has been edited by fly co to see the yanks (edited 03-05-2002).]

..

FCTSTY: if I am not mistaken Joey has stated in the past that he has a 1hr drive to MCO... therefore 4:45 is not an unreasonable time to be on the way out to a 7:45 flight

[This message has been edited by EWR-COflyer (edited 03-05-2002).]

Yes, I must get up early FOR MY FLIGHT, not to check ITN. Since I am up anyway, I check it when I first get up at 4:45 (I don't leave until later). My cursory investigation (1 minute on ITN, 3 minutes on the CO site, NOT half an hour) provides me with information that I (and others who post here) find useful about the inner workings of CO; especially during this transition period of new EUA functionality at 3.0 hours. If the information is of no use, I apologize for wasting your valuble time by forcing you to read this. And since I am up early anyway, I would rather be grumpy in FC than coach.

As far as assuming everything will work as it should...heh.

[This message has been edited by Joey (edited 03-05-2002).]

FCTSTY: Why does it concern you what time Joey gets up, or that he double checks to see if his EUA has been processed? Heck why does it matter to you where he is seated or what mood he is in while seated there? After all, it's just a way to get from point A to point B, right?

Better be careful, or someone might call you "mean-spirited". I've seen that happen to a few other people here on the good old CO board who chose to express opinions different from the "Continental-Krishnas"...

You know I always had a VooDoo feeling about "Change/View" Seats option. I prefer it to a "View" seats option and THEN if I want to change it I hit "Change".

I always felt more comfortable checking ITN seat assignments over CO.com. The change/view seat option has always been funky. I have booked many a flight for my parents who travel together, my father prefers Aisle and my mother, window. Well they always seem to swap them, so even if I tell them to change seats...e.g. Dad in 6A and Mom in 6C, I move Dad to 6B, then Mom to 6A and them Dad to 6C, when I click "next flight" it reverses them back!!! ggrrrrrr...

So from all those experiences, I was always paranoid that if I had change/view at the wrong time I would lose my coach seat. Now you have proved that it can happen. Now, I will always call CO to change seats!

- HobokenFlyer

P.S. I am on EWRCO-Flyer's team... I don't consider myself a "krishna" by any means, but I understand that they run a business and you have to make money. Even though I desperately want my upgrade for my $155 T fare, I understand when they would rather sell them to Full Y's or FC paying passengers.

OK, I take back everything I said!

I got a battlefield promotion from coach to FC on the plane... was seated next to a Gold Elite who got the EUA now I am fuming!

I nearly fell off my chair, I checked (2) flights I am booked on next week... both of 'em A9 F9!

surely there is a glitch in the system that will be rectifed promptly