LKYGSR

NW 1760 OMA-MSP 12-17-09

At check in on the morning of the 17th, upgrade to FC not available, even though 12 seats are showing open at NWA.com. I end up being #5 of 14 on upgrade waitlist. No big deal, automated upgrade must not have run this week. Get to the airport, “Flight Oversold, looking for three volunteers”. I check NWA.com, I am now #7 of 17 on upgrade list and FC shows checked in full, “what the he%%??"

I say nothing and go about the normal boarding process, as I pass by the now 10 open seats in FC to take my bulkhead seat I wonder what’s going on. FC remains empty until the very last minute when 10 people, board and take all the FC seats, 4 of the 10 are small children. Now I know something is not right.

As soon as we land MSP, I’m on the phone to Delta to try and find out what happened. Thankfully, I was transferred to Chisholm as the Rep who took my original call could not answer any of my questions. The Rep in Chisholm was very kind, and very helpful; listened to my story and then started researching what happened. He then reports to me that there are 47 people on the first class upgrade list, what the he%%?, As he digs deeper he confirms the 10 FC seats went to people without Medallion status. He talks with his manager and tells me I will hear back from his manager or the OMA station manager.

I’m still waiting to hear back but this is what I believed happened.

Gate agent was confronted with an oversold flight, and people with no seat assignments traveling with small children. If she upgrades the Medallions, then she has to split up the small children from parents to give them the coach seats the Medallions vacate. She can’t split up the small children, so she would have to rework all kinds of seating to get the Medallions upgraded and keep the kids with the parents. Instead of doing that, she takes the easy way out, upgrade the parents with the kids so she doesn’t have to rework the seating.

Now, part of me thinks that because the flight was oversold (root cause) I agree with the action the GA took, on the other hand, I fly 150+ segments a year, I’ve earned the UG, in this case, no big deal really, it was only a 50 min flight.

The big deal to me is…..Due to the airline policy to oversell flights, it created a problem for the gate agent, and resulted in Medallion customers not receiving the best in class service. They could have at least offered us a free drink coupon as we boarded, but not a word was said.

HWGeeks

maybe those people were bumped from another flight of volunteered form another flight and were told they would get FC.

lofly

WOW, and to think, I was going to post today, there has not been a post this past week about "I didn't get my upgrade" .

That post just got shot down , but for a just call.

JSFox

One question is why doesn't this family have assigned seats? When our kids were young we always planned far enough ahead to get seated somewhat together. If they had just had a death in the family or as HWGeeks mentioned, got bumped from a cancelled flight, then I wouldn't have a problem with them taking my upgrade. If this was simply poor planning on their part and at the last minute (which I suppose could be anytime in the past several weeks) they decided to take a trip, then lack of planning on their part doesn't constitute an emergency (or loss of deserved upgrade) on my part.

Could all 10 have been weather related re-routes?

LKYGSR

That is a possible possibility......

GBadger

That is one possibility...another is that after you checked in in the morning, there were several higher ranking elites that hadn't checked in yet. Another possibility is misconnecting F passengers... Another one is F passengers being transferred from previously cancelled flights. There are likely several F passengers that don't have elite status on every flight.

The likely scenario is that it was a combination of all of these.

fromYXU

I guess the agent could have rearrange the whole flight. the you can open a new thread: "GA delays flight".

The flight is just over an hour long. You probably spent more time dealing with this than the flight lasted. Good for you. I just have more things to do with my time.

SchmutzigMSP

The four small children could have been with their Platinum parents who were able to book them as companions and thus received an upgrade.

Companion upgrades come in all shapes and sizes.

Or they simply purchased first class or were on a first/business class award. Believe it or not, I've seen that happen many times, too. The other suggestions about being bumped from other flights or being re-routed seem perfectly plausible as well.

sbagdon

Two reasons I can think of:

* the parents logged in nwa.com or dl.com to assign their seats, saw there was nothing available next to each other, and went all passive-agressive and figured they'd deal with it at the airport. High likelihood that there was assignable seats in the P section of Y, yet if they aren't Elites, they can't assign them.

* the tickets were bought on orbitz/etc, in which (as I understand it) seat assignments are not "assignments", they are "requests". The parents never went to nwa.com or dl.com to confirm their assignments, and when they went to check-in, they now had unassigned seats (as the assignments were overridden by airline-site assignments).

I'll agree there's a high likelihood that the GA just filled up F, rather then go through the effort to EUA Elites, then shuffle Elites forward in Y, then shuffle others around to get the families together. I'm sure it could have been done, if they staffed the GA station appropriately.

avidflyer

shennanigans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SchmutzigMSP

LOL. I knew you would.

pmaddock

Based on what I've read in the 'shennanigans' thread it sounds like the GA violated airline policy and should be disciplined. The published domestic upgrade policy is pretty clear that Medallions are supposed to get the available domestic upgrade seats.

Exiled in Express

This is a big if. I did a trip though Omaha this year and the Skyway GAs are booked solid. I am sure they did the best they could given the goal of ontime departure and the seat assigninment situation that was handed over to the airport. If DL wants more done at the gate they need to allot more resources.

gte157q

a gate agent doing whatever they want? that is preposterous, i don't believe it. DL gate agents follow all the rules and always smile.

SDQBound

I was recently flying with another medallion and four non-medallion members. Both of us medallions were upgraded, and the other four passengers bought A fares so all of us were in First. Each of the medallions had two non-medallions on our PNRs. We missed our connecting flight because our inbound flight was very late, so we got rebooked in Y for the next flight, but didn't receive seat assignments. When the gate agents opened the flight, they immediately called all of us and gave us seats in F, before clearing the upgrade list.

Why call it shennanigans? From what I understand, you don't have to be a MEDALLION to seat in F, and getting a medallion or a shennanigan upgrade is the only way to sit in first class. I think we are getting very passionated about blaming our lack of success in upgrades to shennanigans, and not taking into account that there are frequent IRROPs and passengers who held a confirmed F seat in another flight and had to get rebooked to a new flight.