[oklalibralady]

Ok. I would not have believed this had I not seen it. But--I was warned. My son was booked on the same 6 AM flight exactly 24 hours prior to my departure and arrived at the boarding gate 18 minutes before the flight was due to depart. His baggage was checked at 5:10 AM; there was not a ticket agent at the counter until 5 AM. The delay was getting through security. Anyway, their ticketed seats had been reassigned. 12 hours later he called me from the car they had rented. They finally gave up and drove. He told me to get there to be first in line to check my baggage. So I showed up at 4:15 AM and stood there first in line until the agent showed up shortly after 5 AM. I had no trouble getting through security and was surprised to see at least 20 persons already in the gate waiting area; about four groups traveling together. There was no employee at the counter, but I saw three different persons in those groups walk up to the counter, log in to the computer, and make some entries. They never approached the counter after the AA employee showed up. Then at 5:26 AM the employee started calling those same persons up as stand by and assigned them seats. Then around 5:45 passengers started showing up whose seats had been reassigned. I know for a fact that 8 of the 20 persons were AA employees. The wives were talking about the shopping trip they had planned in Dallas. S0--the only conclusion I could draw was that paying passengers were simply robbed of their seats by the AA employees-all because the employees know the system. It should not matter that the paying passenger arrived "late"--they had assigned seats which they had paid for. The persons who took their seats did not pay for them. That is just wrong.

[ChrisH]

In the event that they did try to change seats, etc --- here is what you do. All employees have sign-ins to get into the computer systems (i.e., password, etc.). Anything that an employee does in the computer system, is recorded, along with who did it. If these employees got into the system, and unseated other passengers, etc., than it would keep record, in the system, that this was done.

Note the flight, and date, call AA customer service, and let them know what happened. They will be able to look into it, and see what these employees did, in the system. If they did what you say, that is a BIG NO NO, as you don't mess with paying customer's reservations, to accomodate stand-bys. They will be able to see who was an employee traveling, and see whether they logged in, and what they did, when they logged in. If they unseated, and re-arranged a paying customer's reservation, to accomodate stand-bys, they will hear about it.