Alaska Didn’t Add Me to The Upgrade List, How Should you Avoid it!

Hi everyone, this post opens the beginning of my travel summer series: London + Iceland End of Summer Adventure!

It’s October?

I know it’s October already, but last month I managed to squeeze in a last minute vacation. 🙂 My blogging has been almost non existent but I hope to have the posts up soon (sorry for the delay!). Adjusting for school, recruiting for full-time and getting ready to graduate is much busier than I thought it would be! But certainly, an exciting time and thanks for all of your support.

Now on to the drama:

So for our trip, my parents and I were on a flight from LAX-SFO on Alaska Airlines. 

I was originally booked in a Main Cabin seat on an Airbus A320 in row 5, then about two weeks prior to the flight there was an equipment swap to an Airbus A321 and Alaska kept my row 5 seats. Butttt, on an Airbus A321, row is 5 Premium Class.

Score! I was happy to have an upgrade to Premium a few weeks before.

Part One: The Oddness

I found it odd that two days before departure it still showed Premium Class at $15 if I wanted to move seats via the Alaska Airlines Website and App. Previously when I flew to Seattle I chose my Alaska Premium Class seat for no charge via the app 48 hours in advance because I’m an MVP member. Odd.

Part Two: It all makes sense (but not really)

So 24 hours before, I checked in and to my surprise my parents and I were not on the Alaska Airlines upgrade list for First Class! I called to find out what happened, and they said that I would have to split my reservation up individually if I wanted an upgrade even though my parents and I have MVP. This is also why I couldn’t choose Premium Class seat for free 48 hours before departure! 

It doesn’t really make sense to me why I have to split the reservations.  I do understand if you’re traveling with people without status for this to occur, but not in my case since my entire party had MVP status.

So, if you are traveling with other MVP members:

Make sure to split the reservations in order to make sure you make it on the Alaska Airlines upgrade list.

Part Two: On my flight home a week later from SJC-LAX, the same thing happened and even though there was FC upgrade space available, none of our upgrades cleared 48 hours in advance! A quick phone call, then we were all automatically upgraded on that flight after splitting the reservations. Note: this agent said if you have 2 passengers traveling on the same reservation, it isn’t a problem. Just 3+. I think it’s a bit annoying, and their system seems kind of lame.

Cheers,

theresorttraveler

LONDON + ICELAND ADVENTURE:

Stay tuned to see the rest of my London + Iceland Adventure posts!

AIRLINES:

• Alaska Didn’t Add Me to The Upgrade List, How Should you Avoid It!
• Alaska A321 Review LAX-SFO
• Icelandair Boeing 767 Extra Legroom SFO-KEF
• Icelandair Boeing 767 Extra Legroom KEF-LHR
• Review: Alaska E175 First Class SJC-LAX

AIRPORT LOUNGES:

• Alaska Lounge @ LAX
• Air France/KLM Lounge @ SFO
• Plaza Premium Arrivals Lounge LHR
• Plaza Premium Lounge London Heathrow Terminal 2
• The Club at SJC

HOTELS

• Hilton London Islington Executive Level
• Hilton Reykjavik Nordica Executive Level
• My First La Quinta Hotel Stay Review