Upgrade irregularity
 

Just got off of flight 374 (SAN-IAH). Noticed that 1B went out empty. The Customers Upgraded info First Class showed:
SYF, R. 1B

As we pushed away from the gate, I mean right before the door closed, the list showed Swa, C as waiting for an upgrade. Obviously SYF did not show up. Even after the flight landed, it still showed SYR as having received the upgrade but he/she was not on the flight.

thoughts?

If he/she was not on the flight, shouldn't Swa, C have been upgraded?

It's possible that SYF was on the flight, but didn't know they got upgraded & the GA didn't do anything about it. Do you happen to remember if the GA used the boarding pass scanner (if they have them) or if they took part of your BP or typed in your sequence # as you boarded? If SYF wasn't on the flight, they should have not been listed on the PDA site after the flight.

It could be the recipient of the upgrade decided to stay in coach with a companion.

If that's the case, wouldn't the next person on the list have been upgraded?

99% sure the BP was scanned as we boarded.


Does the GA bear the burden for making sure the upgrades are done properly? Certainly you can't expect everyone to have a blackberry/pda to be able to monitor this in real time at the gate.

This is textbook shenanigans.

The upgrade was probably a battlefield upgrade, processed in the system just before door close, and never delivered to the customer.

This way the computer shows all seats were filled, and the agent did their job. Textbook.

I had an interesting thing occur to me yesterday. I was in 1A coming back from Vancouver. There was a nice lady sitting next to me in 1B as we had our pre-flight drinks and such. Before the door closed, there was a little commotion happening between the gate agents and the flight attendants as there were only supposed to be 11 people in First Class, instead of the normal 12. Then, the lead flight attendant starts talking to the nice lady in 1B and says that the seat needs to go out empty, and that she'll need to sit in the back.

Later, I find out that one of the 3 pilots had originated in Houston that morning. For the return trip, he was to sit in the cockpit for takeoff at YVR and landing at IAH. The rest of the time, he occupied that seat for "rest".

I didn't get onto pda.continental.com since I was roaming, so I don't know how it showed on the site, but thought it might be timely to present this scenario.

Cheers.

With 10 minutes to spare, I was able to get yesterday's upgrade list. I do see that someone *was* 'upgraded' on the website.

Upgrade Standby List:
Capacity: 12 | Booked: Full | Checked In: Full
Customers Upgraded to First Class: No Upgrade Standby Customers
NAME SEAT
AHL, K. 1B
CLA, L. 3F
FOR, J. 2F
GIL, C. 3B
SMI, B. 2B
SMI, L. 2A

Ok, a question to you seasoned/senior(?) FTers. Is this something we should report to CO Insider for further investigation, or do we just letting sleeping dogs lie? I know neither of these instances effected the OP directly (me or flyinfroggie), but it does effect all of us if the GA/FAs don't do their job properly. I also don't know if we should be running to CO Insider every time we see irregularities. Thoughts?

I would not flood CO Insider's inbox with individual examples of potential upgrade shenanigans which do not directly affect the person who witnessed the events. I think that there are enough direct examples posted on this board for him to get a good sampling of what the issues are. ;)

That said, since CO Insider does monitor this forum when he has time, I think that any subject heading which references upgrades or food is bound to get his attention. :D

Co insider will not do anything but claim it was a mistake and leave it at that. This is a know issue and happens more and more. Larry and Scott should grow some balls and start trainning these GA's/FA's properly so these schenanigans wouldn't happen in the first place! I know I jumped ship to CX due to this nonsense and so should anyone else that gets screwed. That should teach him. Now that they are down 20% in the month of may lets go for a record for june say 35% down?

Agreed.