u/Speak_UpWearingTowel

For concerts.. Do not book section 106. Especially do not book row A for section 106. That is where the garbage cans sit, right below your row.

And you know what amateurs at concerts do? Like at the Weezer concert last night? They barf. Sometimes in the can, most times half in half out of the can. And half the night is cleaning up the barf of people who didn’t make it to the garbage cans right in front of your high priced rows.

Ps. To the parents (I’ll assume parents based on age and lookalike) of the super super drunk I-am-not-convinced-actually-legal chick in the Weezer shirt and the super curly hair… your maybe 16 year couldn’t walk (both of you couldn’t even carry her up the stairs because of how dead weight she was), she couldn’t speak when the event worker tried talking to her. She barfed everywhere. And needed to be taken out in wheelchair. Do better.

A new one happened to me this morning. I was supposed to fly CLT to CVG this morning. I go to look at if it is on time when I woke up... I have no seat and no boarding pass. I had paid for my own first class upgrade on a work flight a week ago and as of yesterday when I checked in, I still had my FC seat. Yet this am - no seat and no boarding pass. After a long run around...
 
Essentially they gave up my seat for a "government transport" and the flight had been turned over to airport control due to whatever was being transported on that flight. No notification or anything. The flight was very oversold and they were already looking for volunteers yesterday to switch flights, so no chance of getting any seat on that flight. They could not confirm for me that there was even an open seat. They said... well, you could go to the airport and check with the gate agent. "I have no boarding pass... so how do I get to gate?".. well maybe the ticket counter can help you? ... but if they can't, the next flight is 7 hours later.
 
Then I was basically held hostage for any changes, because I was checked in, and no one could seem to help me. And I was not able to change anything until I can get them to "uncheck me in" - "only the gate agent can do that". I can't get a seat assignment. I can't modify to a different flight. For 2.5 hrs I fought an endless loop of finger pointing from AA to [insert corp travel vendor here] to "only the airport" can help you because of control of the flight. So really my only course of action was to cancel it.

I’m not concerned about the refund on the FC upgrade, they are always good about that. And it was a work trip so I got a travel credit back. But…

Wtf? Has anyone else ever been booted for a “government transport”? What could that even mean?

Edit: 1) thanks to those who said it was an air marshal! I was picturing something far more interesting. 2) to answers some questions…..

-The resolution was I had cancelled long before making this post, so wasn’t looking for advice on how to get out of the mess.

-it was not vitally important I get to CVG, it was a customer dinner and a 90 minute meeting the next day. I’m just doing the meeting remote. So potentially sitting at an airport for hours on end, or taking a non-direct, just wasn’t worth it for me.

-for those responders who pointed out there are other flights on this route daily, that is true. What is also true is that this was a work trip and we have strict guidelines around our travel vendor booking everything, the cost, and the preferred airlines. The direct AA flight 7 hours later was my only option. At that point I would have missed the dinner anyway.

-for the person who said I would “rather complain than find a solution”, the solution was I cancelled. And isn’t this community at least partially for ranting about the quirky things that happen during our patronage of AA?

Thanks again for the responses!