The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I board.

[horseman]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

I had something similar on Sunday. I was on a cheap ticket connecting from PVG to MEL. I asked the check in agent at the J transfer desk if it was possible to get to an earlier flight. She could move me but not to the next flight. I asked if it was full or if restrictions on my ticket prevented me from being moved to the next flight. She confirmed that the flight was full. In the bus over to domestic I checked Expertflyer and it showed Y9. I spent an hour in the J lounge at Sydney, not exactly a hardship but I would have preferred the extra hour at home.

I did wonder if Expertflyer is correct. By the time I reached the domestic terminal the flight was in the last stages of boarding, so had no chance to get to the J lounge service desk and back. Occupational hazard of flying on a discounted economy ticket I guess.

Never been able to score an earlier flight like this either with QF, however a QF booking with a QF flight number, on AA metal, AA had no problems in doing this for me

 

[lc_461]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

I can't speak for Qantas, but I know that many airlines have ground staff that 'edit' the flight's seating ~24 hours before departure, with the aim of blocking seats if there are spare available, for high value customers/special assistance pax/parents with infants if at all possible, as well as fixing up the computer's preseating of couples, families etc.

Staff won't manually change a seat that has been specifically prebooked or requested by a passenger, so if Mr Platinum has booked 31A, and another passenger has requested 31B, my experience is that even on a half empty aircraft, neither person will be moved from their preselected seat.

So there are some errors in the system- but in a 200 seat economy cabin having 12 spare seats is absolutlely nothing to 'play with', and I think it is quite probable that it wouldn't have been possible to move you with a spare seat, even if the staff wanted to.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

Staff won't manually change a seat that has been specifically prebooked or requested by a passenger, so if Mr Platinum has booked 31A, and another passenger has requested 31B, my experience is that even on a half empty aircraft, neither person will be moved from their preselected seat.

ha!! I got bumped from my seat in the mini cabin on a 767 (had row 23 snagged at t-80) on the day of departure because (and I quote) 'a platinum needs to sit there with his family'. The mini cabin went out virtually empty while I was shunted down the back. (Thankfully as it turns out because they had young kids and the cabin resembled a war zone when we had to walk though it on disembarking - and this was just a SYD-MEL flight!)

 

[Kangol]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

ha!! I got bumped from my seat in the mini cabin on a 767 (had row 23 snagged at t-80) on the day of departure because (and I quote) 'a platinum needs to sit there with his family'. The mini cabin went out virtually empty while I was shunted down the back. (Thankfully as it turns out because they had young kids and the cabin resembled a war zone when we had to walk though it on disembarking - and this was just a SYD-MEL flight!)

Wow. CL I can understand, but WP?
What is your status? Seems like such a person would have had a fair bit of influence at (or on) QF..

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

Wow. CL I can understand, but WP?
What is your status? Seems like such a person would have had a fair bit of influence at (or on) QF..

their words not mine! but I guess at least they were honest about it. But it was a bit of a pain when they move me such a long way down and I see only about 5 seats in the 2 row mini cabin occupied (one family and one other random passenger). Although as I said - turned out for the best by the look of it.

 

[Mattg]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

I had a similar issue this morning; I asked checkin agent for a window seat and was told there were none left on the flight - she even showed me the computer which showed window seats taken, so fair enough I thought. Anyway, it turns out there were almost a dozen spare window seats, and in fact some entire rows remained completely empty.

 

[CaviAck]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

I had a similar issue this morning; I asked checkin agent for a window seat and was told there were none left on the flight - she even showed me the computer which showed window seats taken, so fair enough I thought. Anyway, it turns out there were almost a dozen spare window seats, and in fact some entire rows remained completely empty.

That's not exactly fobbing off then is it? to the best of her knowledge she couldn't see an "available" window seat.

You weren't on a Dash8 were you? Weight distribution might be a reason for whole rows being unavailable.

 

[Mattg]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

That's not exactly fobbing off then is it? to the best of her knowledge she couldn't see an "available" window seat.You weren't on a Dash8 were you? Weight distribution might be a reason for whole rows being unavailable.

Sorry, I should clarify that the similarity is in the fact that I couldn't get the seat I wanted (any window seat) despite these seats being available. As I said, I don't blame the ground staff for this.In fact I was on a dash 8, and realise that this may have been a factor (there was one person in the first three rows or so) but there were still other window seats throughout the plane (middle and back too).

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

Just because ExpertFlyer says Y9 doesn't mean there are seats available on the aircraft. Y is often oversold using the magical yield formulas that get the best bang for buck for the airline. If there is availability in your booking class however, the agent is probably just being lazy. EF also doesn't interface with Amadeus (QF's native GDS), but rather a rehash of inventory which may not be up to date.

Regarding 'fly ahead' to use the DJ phrase, the only reason QF will allow it on a restricted Y fare is if they have a "call ahead" (may not be the exact term) authorization in the Altea checkin system which lets them move you (it allows them to override the system). The system is very smart (from the airline's perspective) and very restrictive as to what the agent can do. In some cases, there literally isn't anything they can do for you within the parameters of the system.

Saying all of that, most of QF's overseas agents are outsourced, and typically lazy as they work for their local sub-standard carrier, and could care less about QF pax or their status. Case in point the LAX agents who ruin my experience every time by changing my 1A allocation made 3 months out to 6E on the day after I already have my boarding pass, as an example. Had a window but lost it due to American idiots.

Sometimes it's the dragon, other times its the gremlins.

Note: I've never worked for QF but did work for an airline that used its systems many years ago. I remember QUBE, and was around when they moved to Amadeus. I miss the ID fares but not being at the bottom of the wait list.

 

[oz_mark]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

and could care less about QF pax or their status.

I truly doubt that that could care less.

 

[ozbeachbabe]

Re: The classic fobbing off from ground staff - i'll be out of their hair once I boar

Regarding 'fly ahead' to use the DJ phrase, the only reason QF will allow it on a restricted Y fare is if they have a "call ahead" (may not be the exact term) authorization in the Altea checkin system which lets them move you (it allows them to override the system). The system is very smart (from the airline's perspective) and very restrictive as to what the agent can do. In some cases, there literally isn't anything they can do for you within the parameters of the system.

When airlines who use Amadeus do have a 'flow forward' in place, in order to move a pax to another flight on a restricted fare on the day of travel eg a Red-e-Deal they must do a 'force transfer' which overrides Altea saying "changes not permitted" or similar. What also happens is that doing thing also overrides the theoretical seating so intead of putting a NB towards the rear or the aircraft it will automatically allocate them the most forward seat for their ticketed class of travel eg 4B or 4E on a 737 which may have previously been a platinum shadow for trippin_the_rift who is unfortuntately seated in 4C.

Again in 'flow forward' situations, even flexi saver fares eg 'L' class fares which are changeable on the day may have to be overrided if the fare was originally booked in L class but there are no L seats left on the new flight (there may still be plenty of Y,B,H,M class etc) which again will override the theoretical seating & see lower status pax seated forward.

I've also been lied to many times by staff that don't appear to care about the airline/their job.

I suggested to QF a while back that some minor changes (and inexpensive) to how seating is assigned would mean happier top-tier flyers in Y. On soo many occasions a bronze/silver member has ended up with a better seat than myself even though I booked/selected seats/checked in before them.

It's all too common and as the OP demonstrates, when you fly a lot there are tiny things that irk you and they actually mean a great deal to the overall image you have of an airline. Simple fix, too!

Countless times I've had a silver/bronze next to me when there are plenty of seats available further down the back. Same goes for business class too.

Staff can override a shadow because it's a soft seat assignment and not an actual blacked out seat.

What the OP probably means is, as a Platinum member if there is an empty seat next to a bronze member down the back, yet Mr Platinum can't get the empty seat - what does that say about the value of status?

If QF could stop the override of theoretical seating when staff use the 'force transfer' option I think these issues you experience would be a lot rarer. Having said that it's probably a fix that would have to go back to Amadeus to do & they'd probably want to charge a fortune to do it so I don't necessarily agree it would be a "simple fix".

Actually not many staff can do what you have said. The seat is displayed as an 'R' on the agents screen, majority of agents cannot overide this.

Overseas it would be even fewer agents who can do this & I imagine the sign ons used by the contract staff would definitely not have the override ability - probably only the supervisor. Even if there were 13 'spare' seats, you're not going to magically have 3 seats together like 27DEF it will be more like 50E, 39F, 57E or something like that.

I can't speak for Qantas, but I know that many airlines have ground staff that 'edit' the flight's seating ~24 hours before departure, with the aim of blocking seats if there are spare available, for high value customers/special assistance pax/parents with infants if at all possible, as well as fixing up the computer's preseating of couples, families etc.

This is all fine & dandy a day or so before departure however so much can happen on the day of travel with people wanting to move to earlier flights. Look at pax in the premium checkin queue mid-afternoon on a weekday flying the golden triangle route. Sometimes just about every pax will say "I'm booked on the 7.00pm flight but I just wanted to know if there are any seats on an earlier flight".

It's not unusual to have 40 to 50 available seats left on such flights 90 minutes prior to departure yet the flight departs totally full due to the flow forward situation. In this situation pax who asked at checkin "are there many spare seats on the flight/is there anyone in the middle seat" may feel miffed because they were told what was the truth at checkin but due to the many variables that happen with flights the situation they were expecting is no longer what they experience.

I had a similar issue this morning; I asked checkin agent for a window seat and was told there were none left on the flight - she even showed me the computer which showed window seats taken, so fair enough I thought. Anyway, it turns out there were almost a dozen spare window seats, and in fact some entire rows remained completely empty.

Did the seat map the agent showed you display the window seats with an 'R' (restricted for higher status pax) or were they occupied or pre-allocated when the icon with the person is in that seat? Were window seats that were available on board all over the place or were they in consecutive rows?