American co-pay buys upgrades…to the wrong flight

Nobody loves co-pays when they are upgrading with miles, but most frequent travelers are grumpily getting used to them.

For two clients on American Airlines, however, the $750 they paid to upgrade flights to Costa Rica ended up causing a mistake that could have stranded them on their trip.

The passengers in question were doing a combined business and pleasure trip. They were flying into Liberia, Costa Rica, and returning from San Jose, Costa Rica. And I ticketed them with nonrefundable tickets back in April.

Because of American’s co-pay system, travel agents can only request upgrades by phone. (The Advantage system is complicated and requires payment up front, plus there are little details such as to keep two people on one record you must use one credit card and only one person’s miles. In addition, the American agent needs the credit card security code.)

Also, when an agent or traveler calls in for an upgrade, American reissues the ticket internally. But all it shows in the original record is the first ticket showing exchanged. Then, American keeps control of the new e-ticket.

OK, so far so good. Except for the amount of time it took on the phone, we were able to get two of four segments confirmed for upgrade, and the other two waitlisted — fortunately as it turned out.

Both waitlists eventually cleared, but when the client looked carefully at the second message from American, she discovered the flight the airline was confirming was NOT the flight they had booked on the return.

In short, the airline agent had seen the outbound flight to Liberia, and waitlisted an upgrade for a flight home from the same city, even though it was not the flight ticketed. Then the AA ticket agent exchanged the ticket accordingly.

To make matters worse, when the upgrade cleared, the system canceled the original coach return flight.

After about an hour on the phone with an embarrassed second AAdvantage agent, the airline was able to reinstate the original booking and request the upgrade for the correct flight, after reissuing the ticket again.

Fortunately, because the trip wasn’t until December, there was still space; otherwise this could have been much worse. The fact that the flight from San Jose to Miami was originally waitlisted meant that a message was triggered when it cleared. Otherwise, since the clients had the e-ticket receipts with the correct flights, they might not have notice until they either got to the airport or tried to check in online the night before.

Being based in Northern California, the majority of my frequent flier clients are with United, and United agents have unfortunately on several occasions waitlisted upgrades for the wrong flight number, or the wrong date. Although so far not the wrong city, yet. (Knock wood.) Although since our agency uses United computers, it’s an easier mistake to catch.

My sense is too, that with staff cutbacks at all airlines, and with the co-pays making upgrades much more complicated, combining miles plus money, that this sort of thing happens more often than any carrier wants to admit.

So what to do to make sure that it doesn’t happen to you? Or if it does, how an you get it fixed fast? If you are upgrading yourself, make sure the airline emails you a copy of the itinerary when they are done

Airlines will actually email you a copy of an agency upgraded itinerary, too. Although, curiously enough, I had asked AA to send the client a copy of the original upgrade, which apparently they did not do.

Finally, there’s always the option of looking at your itinerary online on the airline’s site. Most carriers will have all itineraries with mileage numbers attached available for viewing.

If you think you don’t have to look at the itinerary, you REALLY don’t have time to deal with it if the trip is wrong.