Question from an EF newb:

AA#71, departing 02/27, shows 14 business class seats open on the seat map. Looking for business class flights on a site such as kayak states "9+ available." When I use EF to search for available SWU upgrades (economy to business) it says 0 available.

Is this standard procedure until hours before the flight when AA determines that some of these 9+ available tickets won't be sold? Just wondering how to interpret all of this information.

I read the post as though maxwell109 had a confirmed flight reservation in the F cabin but had not yet been able to obtain a seat reservation.

This is fairly standard for AA. They are expecting to sell more J seats so are not releasing any C (upgrade) inventory. However AA has a good track record of releasing C close to flight time (like 24hours) so if I were you I would get on the waitlist. AA however does not have a good track record of releasing U (biz awards) close to flight time... they clearly favor upgraders over award users. And as C is available only to AAdvantage they are favoring their own members over OneWorld (who can only upgrade into U) and the upgrade wait list is sorted based on your AAdvantage status, so EXPs with SWU are at the top of the list.

Edited to add... don't just waitlist, also setup an EF alert. I have received an EF alert in the past *before* my waitlist cleared. So take out insurance and enable the alert and telephone AA as soon as it fires.

Good luck.

DAK

No, cmn.jcs is correct, maxwell109 is looking for an upgrade and because physical seats opened up decided to call AA to see if an upgrade could be gotten. The AAgent informed that there were no upgrades and the cabin was in fact sold out.

Flying MUC-PHL-LAX on flight AA717 in economy.

EF shows C availability MUC-PHL and A availability PHL to LAX so I thought I was good.

But AA EXP agent says I cannot use a SWU to upgrade unless there is C availability MUC-LAX. I can't even figure out how to set alerts for that. What am I missing?

The agent is saying that because the PHL-LAX segment is being sold as 3-cabin (but double check with a Flight Availability search). Just create an alert for C inventory for the PHL-LAX flight segment.

Flight availability for 717 on that date shows F7 A7 P6 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M7 L7 W7 V7 G7 S7 N7 Q7 O7

It's clearly a 2 class plane. So you are saying that rows 1-4 are sold as both business and first? And I need to see C availability? And that could happen? It's A7 now, so it seems like if they were to release C they'd do it now.

Thank you, I love EF and am a happy subscriber. I thought I knew all the tricks, but this is stumping me.

In that case the agent is wrong and you should just call back and try again. Since you didn't mention the date you were flying, we looked at a random date in the future and saw as a 3-class config, but that's why we said to check the FA results first.

It's April 7.

I scored an Air Tahiti Nui seat with AA miles thanks to Expertflyer. It's so obscure not only the AA website doesn't have it, the first rep I talked at AA couldn't book it, she needed to transfer me. But I knew there was 1 seat available on CDG-LAX because EF showed me so I explained politely the second time again and bagged that seat! Thanks EF for saving me from an East Coast transfer.

A question regarding the operation of the "aircraft change alerts:" I set one up for a flight from FRA-SFO, which is normally on a 747. Is this alert supposed to inform me if the aircraft is changed to a different type, say a 777? When I manually run the alert, it says "The aircraft has changed..." However, when I check the airline website, it remains a 747. What is happening here?

I have the same problem with all my "aircraft chang alerts"

The equipment change alerts go by the aircraft code and configuration of the seat map. You should be comparing it to the Seat Map search on ExpertFlyer, not the schedule listed on the airline website (which may not change). Look at the ExpertFlyer Seat Map and you'll see the equipment code. If the equipment changes, the seat map will reflect it before the schedule does (if at all).

So, if the Quick Check finds that the aircraft has changed, you should get a notification when the alert is next due to run. If you still need help, then email customercare@ with your account/alert info so we can look it up.

EDIT: What you are seeing is a bug. We recently added a feature that looks at the layout of the seat map, not just the equipment code. However for older alerts that don't have a "before" layout stored, the Quick Check is saying that the equipment changed when it didn't. The alert check itself is working properly but we missed this issue in the Quick Check.

We'll fix it next week, but in the mean time the quick fix is to delete and recreate the alert. This way the seat map layout will be stored and the Quick Check will be accurate (as well has having 2 methods to detect change vs 1).

It keeps sending false alarms for aircraft changes. To all my alerts.

As requested please email any issues to [email protected] so we know who you are and look up the alerts in your account.