Originally Posted by
Three Thousand Rule
Maybe you should try flying in the USA a bit more before you start using words like 'obsessed.'
It is quite normal in the USA for passengers in FF schemes to receive upgrades as part of the package and thus they have expectations.
I am sorry to say that those of us from the other side of the Atlantic who do fly "a bit more" in the USA regularly stand back in sheer amazement at the scenes at the gate desk of all the supposedly-entitled-to-upgrade crowd, waving their frequent flyer cards in the air like they are the Munich Agreement document, elbowing and jostling one another, starting arguments about who trumps who - if anything the word Obsessed is a bit mild, it's like something from the kindergarten sometimes.
The whole upgrades thing has got completely out of hand in the US, to the extent that almost the entire F cabin is just made up of upgrades. It is especially galling that when they are all seated they have to tell their seatmate, who might in this case be on the connecting leg from a long transatlantic trip, and grateful for a little peace and quiet at this time, the full details of their frequent flyer entitlement.
It's especially grim on the odd flight which is only half full, where economy has plenty of empty seats, indeed empty rows, but the F cabin at the front is stuffed. Wonder if they do a proper weight-and-balance for this.
To compensate, F standards of service are nothing, and a 4-hour flight in F there has about the same standards of catering as a 4-hour flight in Y on, say, BA in Europe, served by less pleasant and sometimes downright hostile personnel. I've also been on F flights over an hour long over there where the catering, unbelievably, was absolutely zero. Meanwhile, back in Y, they appear to have given up catering altogether.
Commercially it's a great error, because many of those who were regular first class passengers now no longer find the need to buy it, because they normally get upgraded from Y anyway. How can they come back from this ?