[FDOS_UK]

The other commonsense approach is to upgrade when sure it will be required – e.g. I get one or two involups from Emirates each year, always at the gate.

[canucklad]

I would add, if you’re a company that delivers a service, there is the classic mantra…..

” Don’t over promise and under deliver”

[SimonS1]

@canucklad – how did the cabin crew push him into a corner? When he got on the plane he had a BP with Y+ on it. SwissExpat (somewhat deceitfully) didn’t make that known to the crew who were themselves backed into a corner being unaware of this.

Did the OP say to the crew ‘look my original BP said J but I have just been given this Y+ BP, I’m a bit disappointed, is there any chance you could do something?”. No, just pretended the new BP did not exist.

The time to resolve this was at the bag drop when the Y+ BP was handed over. That was the time to ask to see a supervisor, make feelings known, etc etc.

I agree with the general management by BA was poor, I’m not defending that, but equally I wouldn’t condone underhand behaviour either trying to con the cabin crew into providing a seat that had never been booked or paid for.

[Cwyfan]

SimonS1 has nailed the best independent arbitration view on the head.

[canucklad]

Agreed Simon, I’d personally have been upfront and put the puppiest of puppy dog faces on my coupon.
Sadly, experience tells us that nowadays companies just don’t like puppies.

As an experienced traveller I’d also be hypocritical if I didn’t confess to using my experience to better place me on my travels….
And to me that’s what SwissPat has done. I personally wouldn’t have taken that approach, but his upgrade was finally honoured.

Now,talking about low expectations, I’m off to see the jam tarts

[EU_Flyer]

“I have walked off a shorthaul aircraft that was substituted for a long haul, when I wanted to sleep on a flat bed and insisted (and got) a re-routing on another airline – was I enttitled to this? No idea, but I made a fuss and got it.”

I’d have done the same as you. When you purchased the ticket, the airline had marketed a long haul product for that sector and you weren’t offered it. Your actions were totally reasonable in my view.

“The airline issued a boarding pass for a higher class (most reasonable people would consider that a promise), it doesn’t get much clearer than that.

They then changed it (must reasonable people would consider that the airline reneged.)”

You’re framing this as if there was a contract (ie a promise) between the OP and BA for an upgraded seat in CW. There never was. The OP never paid a fee for that upgrade, nor was he induced to buy the ticket on the promise of a free upgrade. It was an operational upgrade to fit all bums on seats.

“As TimFitgeraldTC wrote earlier, SwissExPat could have cancelled arrangements due to the upgrade and then been unable to reinstate them”.

Yes, but knowing full well this was an operational upgrade (not one purchased at check in) the OP shouldn’t have relied on something they had received purely out of luck.

From a customer service perspective, BA could have let him keep the CW seat as a gesture of goodwill. Whoever was managing the flight (who subsequently downgraded the OP back to Y+) could have kept all the upgraded passengers in CW at BA’s expense. And in a perfect world they would have.

BUT…

My point is that the way the OP misled the crew – by suggesting he’d not been given the product he’d paid for and threatened to complain in a way that forced the crew to move him to Club to shut him up – was unacceptable. It was calculated and the OP knew what he was doing. It is the expectation that the airline is blatantly obliged to provide him something he didn’t pay for that I find unsavory in this example. Just as bad as Y class passengers plonking themselves (an their bags) in Club hoping they won’t be noticed.

As others have also suggested – if he’d been upfront and honest any service recovery upgrade would have been entirely reasonable which BA should have, in my view, obliged.

The fact that airlines make mistakes (and BA’s handling pre gate certainly wasn’t ideal) doesn’t justify the OP unilaterally deciding that he was going to forcefully demand a product worth hundreds of pounds more – that he hadn’t paid for in the first place.

Finally, I have really enjoyed reading all the opinions of our fellow forum members – including (for the avoidance of doubt) the OP’s and those others I have disagreed with. I find the whole upgrade thing can be amusing a lot of the time given we all fly so much that we expect them to happen and get awfully disappointed when they don’t.

But, ethically, I personally draw a fine line between ‘charming’ my way to an upgrade and ‘lying’ my way to an upgrade. There is a big difference.

[FDOS_UK]

Alex_Fly – 16/01/2016 15:38 GMT

Equally, if you believe the OP mislead the airline, you must the accept that by issuing a boarding pass for business class, the airline misled the OP.

It didn’t come with a warning label saying ‘provisional’, did it?

Martyn Sinclair’s post about a charter is a very good point.

[theflyingnurse]

I am stunned by the attitude of some of the posters on here regarding this thread in so much as they seem to think the original poster was actually in the right even though he lied. The bottom line is that he was deceitful in destroying his boarding card for the seat that he was assigned and then proceeded to have a petulant, childish outburst to get what he wanted. Yes BA upgraded him then downgraded him which annoying though it may be, it happens. Any decent person would just accept it and sit where they were supposed to, not lie through their teeth and act like a child. How pathetic and low can you get?

[ImissConcorde]

flyingtonight
+1

[EU_Flyer]

FDOS_UK – 16/01/2016 16:53 GMT

Yes, BA misled the OP that he’d been upgraded to CW for the flight at online check in. Totally agree.

But, as the OP would have been aware as an experienced frequent traveller: what operational upgrades BA giveth for free, BA may taketh away when they have no [legal] obligation – or operational need – to provide it.

A free(!!) upgrade is discretionary and therefore at all times provisional on the airline exercising that discretion.

In short, the OP at no point had a legal right to a CW seat, And further, deliberately led the crew to believe he did. As you are probably aware, that’s really my issue.

And no, the OP’s blatant use of deceptive conduct is not justified by BA’s arguably poor handling of the seat allocation pre departure.

There is simply no ethical justification for the OP’s conscious use of a boarding pass that he was aware was no longer valid.

In the OP’s shoes I’d have been mightily annoyed but I wouldn’t have lied to get a freebie. I’d have been politely upfront with the crew and relied on their good judgment to recover the poor service (including that of the gate staff). If there was no attempt at service recovery on board I’d have then written to BA and complained about being messed about – whilst sitting in the seat allocated to me by the airline consistent with the fare I was travelling on.

[travelworld2]

People seem to be conflating two issues here.

The first is the fact that BA upgraded, then downgraded the OP. Unsatisfactory, probably not the disaster some of those on this thread claim it is but poor customer service nonetheless, at least in the way in which it was handled until he was on board.

The second is the way in which the OP conducted himself on the aircraft, where he used deception in a (successful) attempt to get the upgrade reinstated.. It’s that to which most posters object, particularly as it appears possible that had he simply asked nicely he would have got what he wanted anyway..

Isn’t that the nub of it?

[EU_Flyer]

travelworld2 – 16/01/2016 17:58 GMT

Yes exactly. Although there is also the third issue of whether the OP had a right to keep the CW seat once he’d been upgraded – despite the fact that the upgrade was no longer operationally necessary.

That’s where I and several other forum members disagree. I think that BA had the right to seat the OP back in WT+ once they no longer needed to do the upgrade (albeit with a discretion to keep the upgrades in place – taking into consideration customer service / catering etc).

Others are arguing that once operationally upgraded, the passenger effectively took on the same rights as other fare paying CW passengers when demanding a CW seat – which I disagree with.

[rferguson]

There are two issues here –

What the OP is entitled to as part of his contract with BA.
and
Customer service resolution.

The first part – as soon as you tick that little ‘I agree to the terms and conditions’ box at the end of a booking on ANY airlines website you are basically saying ‘I agree for you to get me from A to B at some point by some means’, That’s the length and breadth of it. BA (or any other airline) has absolutely every right to upgrade you or downgrade you – and if you’ve ticked that box you have agreed to that. Does it make good customer service? Well….on to point two.

In this case it would seem the OP was the only invol. On some flights there are 2/3/15 even 20. Generally once you are upgraded that’s it – you are upgraded. Even if in the end it wasn’t necessary. I’m not sure why the OP would have been reallocated to his original cabin. But at the end of the day there isn’t a plethora of staff managing these things. BA is a huge organisation and like many it’s computers that work these things out and move peoples seats etc etc. They cost far less than people.

Do I think it was a silly thing to do – upgrade someone, allow them to check in online and then return them to their original seat? Absolutely.
Should some form of service recover been enacted? Absolutely. Would I have settled for it if I had been the passenger concerned? Not without putting my case to a supervisor (or two…or three!)

As I see it – and please swissexpat come back and tell me if i’m wrong – there was actually NO point that a resolution of this was sought until he was on the aircraft after pulling a swifty.

The time to seek resolution for this was at the check in counter. Having already checked in online and with a Club boarding card on my tablet I would have not walked away from that check in counter without speaking to a supervisor or DM. As I said in an earlier post – there is an error on the part of BA here and they would have to have accepted that. You could very easily put your point across in such a situation that it had been poorly handled by BA and IMHO you would have walked away with a Club boarding pass with ‘DUT’ printed on it (discretionary upgrade tool).

[MartynSinclair]

I have to admit that before reading this thread, I never knew operational upgrades were reversible.

Still would like to know what happens if you are downgraded at the gate from club to economy (longhaul) – and whether you have the right to be re ticketed on the next flight or whether you have to accept the economy seat…

[rferguson]

MartynSinclair BA does give you the option on flying on the next available service in your ticketed class in the event of a downgrade. In honesty, downgrades happen very very rarely as the premium cabins tend not to be overbooked. I’ve literally seen it a handful of times.

[Author]

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