American Airlines Fixes Bug That Kept Online Upgrades In Limbo

Image courtesy of Andrew W. Sieber

One of the key advantages to being part of an airline membership program is the ability to upgrade your seat. But elite passengers in American Airlines’ AAdvantage program haven’t been able to upgrade ahead of time online for the last few months, an issue that the carrier says has now been fixed.

A spokesperson for American confirmed to Skift.com that there was a glitch that led to upgrade requests sitting in limbo indefinitely, but that the process is now back to normal.

“We did experience a small technical issue that was impacting upgrades clearing. It’s been fixed and the process for clearing upgrades is working as it should,” the spokesperson said.

Past inconsistencies in the online upgrade process have prompted frequent flyers to share their experiences on forums like FlyerTalk, Skift notes: Some think the upgrade problem was an intentional move to hoard seats for last second sales, while others said it was a conspiracy because some upgrade were being processed normally.

“AA is holding back the necessary inventory for upgrades to be processed,” one flyer wrote. “The general belief is they are hoping to be able to sell those seats for the higher fare instead of allowing those of us that have earned/purchased their script (aka 500-mile upgrades) to get them for a lower price.”

American hasn’t explained what caused the glitch.

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