Teh Penalty Box | part 2

You win. No contest.

Sadly this type of behavior must be hurting UA. But in my quick browse of the OP, I don't see what UA did wrong...

At least UA got to play with their money for a few months

Does it feel like UA has stopped trying to mass sell upgrades? I have a ticket for Friday from ORD>MSP with no upgrade option other then 17.5k miles it is showing F4R3, I would have thought they would try to grab rev by offering something.

Same here.

I keep trying to fuel dump the business sale. It seems possible but I am having problems finding an OTA that will take some segments in J and some in Y.

Any suggestions?
I've tried orbitz, expedia, and vayama

Interesting that she had that problem, considering that their official details in TIMATIC specifically do not include that requirement since the World Cup.

The prize, you ask? A bus ride home from BFL at midnight.

I'm checking into a BOS-ORD trip for a friend in August. Searched on Kayak. A result from AA.com showed up, with a United outbound but an AA return. Sure enough, I went to AA.com and the UA outbound shows up on their website?? Bizarre?

Wing seems too short to be a 763. More like a 737 classic IMO.

I believe you are correct.

Nope...AA has long been willing to play OTA for OALs on their site.

I think it mostly came down to the OP not liking CO and not liking how UA is operating these days, and a rude phone agent.

Sorry, I should have said this was in 2004. My bad.

All I have to say to these paid C and F customers jumping ship is:
Rub a dub dub, thanks for the upgrade, bub.

Not really, AA.com has always been willing to act in an orbitz like manner and sell you tickets on another airline.

If I'm willing to double connect on the way home I can get both SFO-BFL and BFL-LAX.

Didn't you hear? UA is buying AA.

You absolutely should do that. More lines.

Excellent job, that has to be it.
I was looking at single runway airports in Spain (Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca) and some in Portugal but none matched the landscape. I even thought it could be St Barths but there was no mountain and the plane was too big.

Yeah, I was trying to figure out where would be that lush and have jet service. I started in eastern Australia, jumped to some random South American coastal airports, then went to AKL and CHC. The beach at Wellington had me convinced.

I looked at Christchurch and moved on from NZ

I've flown into WLG. That picture matches what I remember it looking like, too.

Yes, I now believe something’s really broken. And this happened with an at-the-gate just-before-boarding handling of the upgrade standby list, not some fare paid in advance.

Prior to this experience, I had no proof of any kind to think this was happening, despite people claiming that it was true. When I was 18th on the upgrade list, I assumed there were 17 GS’ and/or 1K’s who’d paid a higher fare than I did to have that higher listing on the upgrade standby list and to get that last-minute upgrade. Post-merger, I’ve yet to get a last-minute upgrade out of LGA to IAH or ORD, where they fly something other than ERJ’s.

AT the recent FTU, at the session where Carlos of UA was kind enough to fly in and talk with folks, discussion got to upgrades, and Tommy asked what sort of upgrade percentage 1K’s were getting. He started with 100% a very few hands went up; more for 75% and 50%. He stopped there, no doubt thinking that a 1K wouldn’t experience less than that. I piped up and said, “How about less than 50%?”, and a bunch of hands other than mine went up, and both Tommy and Carlos looked surprised by this. Carlos made some notes on his pad at this. Some people were around 25%.

I’d previously had issues when the gate monitor listed me as #1 for an upgrade, and not get it. This even happened on a PS flight that I’d twice checked to be sure my RPU was standing by to be used if I was upgraded at the gate; the monitor showed I was #1, but the GA told me the computer said I hadn’t applied an RPU in advance; the flight went out with 2 C seats empty. I’ve written to Scott and Shannon, whom I met several times during our CO years and have corresponded with many times, as well as Customer Care, and have received no response whatsoever to my emails about these various incidents. I get that they’re busy, but not even an auto-reply to a long-standing customer whom they know?!

I can see no reason for the 2 Gate Agents to lie to me, and the way this went down only shows, to me, that what they said was true. Starting at about 23 hours out from departure, whenever I was on land during my 2 MR’s, I would check the upgrade standby listing for my flight on the UA app. Even up to an hour before departure, I was listed as #2, with someone, MCC, as #1. As I got to the gate about 45 minutes out, I look at the gate monitor, and when it scrolls around to the upgrade standby list, I’m now #1, and MCC is #2. Pleased I am. I had nothing to do with that change. Then, as I described in my post, at 30 minutes from departure, the GA calls out, “Mr. MCC, please come to the podium”, and they hand him a new boarding pass when he gets there. Himself is pleased. That’s when I went up to the desk and asked what had happened, as I’d had it happen to me previously. They apologized, and said that they’d tried to get me the upgrade, but that the computer wouldn’t let them print out a BP for me over MCC. That’s when they told me he was a Silver Elite. I’d just assumed he was a 1K at a higher price point till then.

They told me that the UA computer was now giving the standby upgrades to lower level elites who’d paid a higher ticket price than upper level elites; they thought that was how Smisek wanted it. They said that, until recently when it was fixed, even GS’ were being trumped. They said that it was still happening to 1K’s, and they thought this was wrong. They told me that they felt that if there was a seat open and 2 1K’s were vying for it, then those 2 1K’s should battle it out by ticket pricing, and I agreed. However, they told me that a Silver would trump those 2 1K’s at the moment, and that my situation was not the first time, by a stretch, that they’d seen this happen.

When I brought up the numbered listings, they told me that when they were reviewing the passenger manifest, they saw that I was a 1K and was listed below a Silver, and that they were able to override the listings, which they’d hoped would force the computer into giving me the upgrade, but that it hadn’t worked. Again, they apologized, and said the only way to change this was to start bringing this out into the open and to complain about it.

As further proof, when I boarded and passed 2D, the seat given away at the last minute, I asked MCC if he was a Silver Elite, and he confirmed it.

No, I didn’t, with anyone, get into what fare was paid by MCC vs me.

I’ve read plenty of posts here where people are #14 on the upgrade list, and also posts where Silvers note how they were upgraded at the gate. I used to put that down to simple luck, bad or good. Now, I see it differently. I can’t think of any reason for the 2 women at the gate to lie to me; similarly with MCC. Is this peculiar to CLT? I don’t know. But I do know that the standby upgrade listings don’t detail what level elite each of the people are, so there’s no way of knowing, short of having a UA person say so, whether someone should be ahead or behind.

And, so, for now, I believe that the post-merger computer is placing lower level elites above higher level elites on the upgrade standby listings based on paid ticket price, and that what was thought to be a determinant within each particular elite level is now across all elite levels. And I’ll continue to believe it till someone at UA swears/affirms to me that it’s not true.

I was with CO through the Frank Lorenzo years, and stood by them. I flew CO Cal Lite, post-9/11 and even during SARS to HKG. But the experiences of late, and the complete lack of response, not even an auto-reply, have ticked me off more in 2 months than all the Frank Lorenzo years put together. This latest is a very bad thing. I will set up a separate thread to discuss this, and welcome hearing from one of UA’s many Insiders.

Yes, I know this, but they indicated that this was not the case. Were it true, he shouldn’t’ve had to wait till 30 minutes before boarding to get that upgrade, no?