From another thread about getting impromptu upgrades:
Which I do too. But we've all seen the folks who take the opposite approach of yelling to get their way. So does that actually work? Does the squeaky wheel get the grease?

The only time I even get perterbed at a gate agent (but opt for the eyeroll rather than getting pissed) is when they are just being incompetent. With phone agents you can hang up and call back. When a gate agent doesn't know how to check for available aisle seats, its a little rude to move over and talk to the guy working right next to him.

But in situations like weather and mechanical delays - things that are completely out of the control of the agent, what good does screaming do? Is someone really going to work harder for you to get you on a better flight with a FC upgrade if you're making their life miserable?

I've got to assume that screaming works, otherwise you wouldn't see people doing it so often. I just don't understand why it would work.

Screaming at a gate agent got me an upgrade once (on Delta in SLC, a few years back.) The man ahead of me did the screaming. I got the upgrade for having the same problem but not taking the same approach to solving it. The agent was quite candid about why she upgraded me.

I hope that the guy in front of you was still in earshort during the candid explanation.

Basically there are three kinds of screamers:

1) Persons who refuse to accept that things won't always work as they should and get terribly upset when they discover life is less predictable than they think. They will get defensive and start screaming because of their insecurity.

2) Persons who consider themselves important, usually by virtue of combining a job in middle management or finance with a mega-ultra-super-duper UeberAllianz Titanium FF card. The world has to stop for them and the airline has to arrange their transportation to the final destination using the personal plane of the Sultan of Brunei. They scream either because it makes them feel superior to the GA ("I AM ONE OF YOUR BEST CUSTOMERS, TAKE CARE OF ME NOW!") or because they think the other person is far too stupid to understand their instructions.

3) Persons who scream deliberately as a means to their end of getting their wishes attended to. Bullying works more often than it appears to at first glance. If you think about it (and I mean no offence to any GAs), most (non-supervisor) GAs will tend to be genuinely nice people who are unable/unwilling to get a job that would require them to be confrontational and bargain really hard. Plus it is likely that they had been stressed prior to you starting making demands from them therefore one could, with the right use of tones, words, and body language, intimidate the GA and get what they want.

No. 3 is a little art that's quite difficult to perfect, but I do know one or two people who are good at this. I wouldn't do that type of screaming when faced with a GA, but I (knowing that this will not make me any more popular with fellow FTers) will admit to doing it sometimes when faced with a particularly serious and tricky situation for which I am not responsible and a scapegoat has to be found (as opposed to accepting the situation as it is or putting the blame on somebody who cannot assist in resolving it).

I've had this happen twice on CO. Don't remember which airport the first was at - the GA started to apologize to me for the screaming maniac who pushed ahead of me. I said, "I don't know how you do this all day." Got first.

Second time - full flight at PBI, including wife & kids. They changed equipment & rearranged seat assignments. I asked if it were possible, could they try to at least have one parent/kid. Some other person was screaming that his family was not together... in F. I do believe I got their seats

There has only been one occasion (long before FlyerTalk) where being "insistent" looked like my best course of action. I took it and it worked.

Hunki, and I were flying NWA, SEA/MCO, Easter weekend with our two children and our foreign exchange student. The weather was bad and flights were being cancelled left and right. The airport was crowded with anxious folks--many of whom knew they would be spending the night right where they were and we had no interest in joining them. You have to pick your battles.

I don't think I actually screamed, but I refused to leave the desk, asking periodically how it looked. Finally the agent looked at me in frustration and said, "What do I need to do to get you to go sit down?" I winked and smiled and pointed to the boarding gate, at which time he issued five boarding passes to a very, very overbooked flight. We boarded, leaving hundreds of unhappy folks waiting at the gate.

My children, who were highly emotional teenagers at the time, are still not sure whether their strongest emotion that day was complete humiliation at my stubborn persistance, or absolute awe at my results.

I'm sure it would have been a mixture of both Punki

If you didn't scream and got these results, we can all take copious notes!

Screaming can be a knee-jerk reaction for some. I don't think its prevalence has anything to do with its success rate.

More often than not, I've seen screaming or very rude demanding actually work in the US. It is very upsetting to see gate agents cave in to rude people, because that encourages these people to be rude the next time. However I have never seen it work in Europe. I actually love to see Americans go off on LH staff at FRA or the AF staff at CDG. They often end up crying and apologizing after being told they have been removed from the flight in question and any other flight that day.

Been there, done that, too.

Just a few weeks ago I was at a Marriott when Mr Big next to me was complaining about not getting his preferred room (yes, one specific room) and then freaked when told there was nothing on the Concierge floor. "I'm Gold, I've stayed here every week for 6 weeksm if you don't treat me right, blah, blah"...

I handed my AmEx to the agent right next to him, and held up my PLT card just to be sure it was on the record. She looked up my info (I had been there for 5 months) handed me my key to a Concierge Floor room, glanced next to me, and gave me a little smile. We didn't say a word.

I should have waited on the elevator for him

So why doesn't it happen in the US? Last time I checked AF was a lot more profitable than any major US airline. A part of AF is owned by the state- but it's been ages since it was subsidised for the last time.

Limited competition and reduced benefits.

??
Anyone from Europe can open as many airlines as they want to operate in the french and other markets!

Yep, there are a heck of a lot more airlines in Europe than America. Plus the US airlines have gotten far more in subsidies over the last 4 years. However this discussion diverges from the real issue which is cultural rather than political or financial.