Hi forum
I am sharing my tale of woe partially for all of your amusement and partially to help cope with my blunder.
In light of all the maintenance issues I had been watching my itinerary this morning like a hawk. Flying YVR -> YYZ -> Europe. I had confirmed eUps for all segments in Signature Class, and I even pulled it off with the legendary Companion Pass combo. Sweet! I was feeling pretty proud of snagging that deal.
Sure enough, I get the dreaded text this morning:
"Your flight AC186 to Toronto is delayed because we're completing unscheduled aircraft maintenance."
This would have put me in to YYZ past when our connection departed, and with unscheduled maintenance the odds of things improving (especially with all the other fleet disruptions!) was very low.
Immediately, being the smart frequent flier I am, I rush to call in and switch to an earlier flight, because I know inventory is already tight today with cancellations and delays. They have 2 seats on AC102, Economy only, sitting apart from my spouse, and of course the answer is "sorry sir, no we cannot honour or transfer your eUpgrade". I do understand this is the correct policy but it doesn't make it sting any less.
No matter, I think, it's better than missing an entire day in Europe due to a missed connection and possibly sitting in Y the next day TATL anyway. So I feel good at this point.
I rush to the airport to catch the earlier flight and make it with plenty of time. But to my surprise, when I check the status of AC186, it had been partially un-delayed to 10:00, leaving enough time to connect after all! I consider switching back, and I ask the agent if this is possible, but they say they won't do it because 45 minutes connection is too risky.
So I "take my medicine", have a Lee's donut in the Café, and head to the earlier flight.
Now I see that AC186 swapped with a different aircraft and wound up leaving even earlier at 09:45. Meaning I would definitely have enough time for my connection, and further meening that I just juked myself out of my own confirmed eUp. Honestly at this point I'm more mad at myself for the blunder than Air Canada.
Did I do the right thing? What would you have done? Moral of the story, be patient and examine all the options before jumping to quick, I suppose ... at least we still have the eUp for the Trans Atlantic sector and the return...
Oh, and did I mention? It's our honeymoon. I won't let this sour things but it's still annoying to start off on the wrong foot and all stirred up.
TL,DR: I had a confirmed eUp, proactively switched myself to an earlier flight due to an expected misconnect, then the original flight ultimately leaves a lot earlier than predicted, meaning I juked myself out of my own upgrade.
Edit: spelling