TAM Eliminating First Class And Improving Business Class

Since I know many blog readers go back to read older posts, I would like to re-post a comment I just made today about my experience keeping my TAM first class itinerary which was changed to business class. I originally posted this to Nick's story on this blog today, about his trip to South America, which originally he originally booked in TAM first. --------------------------------------------------- Hi Nick, Nice review, but I wanted to tell you what you missed when you canceled your TAM first class tickets to take this flight. I was in the same predicament as you. I immediately jumped on the opportunity to fly TAM first class within hours of hearing about it and booked three first class seats for my family JFK-GRU-SCL and return for Xmas week. Imagine my disappointment when I learned through this blog that there would be no first class and that the seats in the downgraded business class cabin would be sub-par. However, we decided to rough it and maintain the itinerary. I was a little surprised when we checked in at JFK and an additional agent started talking to us and seemed to know all about our itinerary. However, I didn’t think much of it. The outgoing flight was an an A330 that still had the old first class cabin and they changed our seats to put us in there. They also gave us access to the AA First Class Lounge. We were very happy at that point. At GRU, we were met by a TAM Special Services escort, which was another surprise. On our connection to SCL, we were driven to the plane and got to board it ten minutes before everyone else. The entire rest of our trip involved escorts. On the return, SCL-GRU, we were finally on the 777 with the four-seat first class cabin that was like a living room. They again changed our seats to put us in that cabin and we had it all to ourselves. The highlight was the three of us having lunch together at a table for four. The seats in the middle section enable you to do that! (like the bed for two Ben loves to talk about). Although there was no table cloth or fancy china or first class food, we were at least in first class. The FAs closed the curtains to ensure we had privacy. I felt like we received first class service. Three FAs served our business class lunch. The real surprise was when we were about to land at GRU to connect to our JFK-bound flight. I took a short nap after lunch, knowing I had just under an hour before landing at GRU. However, I slept for over two hours, wondering why we hadn’t landed, and then heard some kind of announcement in Spanish containing the word Rio de Janeiro. Apparently there was a major wind and thunderstorm over GRU and the entire airport was closed down. Our flight had circled the airport hoping it would clear, but when it ran low on fuel, we were sent to Rio. At Rio we refueled and then headed back to GRU. It was nice to be in the spacious first class cabin but I was sweating bullets that we would miss our connection to JFK. I tried making cell phone calls to rebook our connection while on the tarmac in RIo but couldn’t get cell service. When we finally landed at GRU, perhaps four hours late, the plane pulled onto the tarmac and we were told there was no gate for us yet. However, almost an hour later, they wheeled up some stairs, and a special agent came aboard, grabbed us, told us not to worry, said that they had rebooked us on a flight leaving in a few minutes, said we were given the best seats on the plane although there was no first class cabin, said that they already taken our luggage and retagged it, and then drove us to the gate at a different terminal, where she escorted us onto the flight! Everyone on the plane that we left thought we were celebrity VIPs. We were the only ones who deplaned at that time. I never had any kind of service like this before! Those TAM special service agents were incredible! No one else on our delayed flight could have possibly made their connections and would have had to overnight at GRU. If that was us, we would have had to pay the reciprocal visa fee to leave the airport for a hotel, so we were very relieved. (The flight we got on left about midnight). The flight we missed would have had us sitting in the first class cabin again, but we were very happy to just have an immediate connection in business class, which at least was 2-2-2 in a modern cabin (could have been 2-3-2), although with slanted flat seats. Overall, I was very happy we stuck with TAM. We received the essence of first class service for the most part, received some incredible customer service and escorts, and received a refund in points for the difference between first and business.

Hi Lucky, Another victim of the TAM downgrade here - had two F/Z class seats from GRU-JFK booked for Nov 8th via QF OW redemption - any ideas on my options? Guessing AA won't open seats for me as booked through QF. QF agent had no suggestions! Thanks

Good news -- all set with 2 first class seats on AA 77W round trip from DFW-GRU. Hooray... and phew!

@Brian -- thanks for your notye. I did call back and lucked out with a very sympathetic agent who said she was still unable to do anything, despite talking to the Help Desk for quite some time. She eventually spoke to a very sympathetic supervisor, who basically asked me for my choice of AA flights and promised to make it happen -- though she still had to send it over to the Rate Desk where they don't even take calls from the reservations agents. She said she even put in the record that she told me it was going to be confirmed and she gave me her name and city in case there are problems. So, fingers crossed....

@Todd When my friend called American last week, he had luck with the first agent, to whom he spoke. However, he was on the line for an hour with her, and she had to work with some sort of back office. Which one, I'm not sure. He has no status on American. Perhaps you could follow Lucky's advice. Hang up, and call back. Hopefully they didn't annotate your reservation. Good luck!