I was waiting to board my Chicago to Los Angeles flight (I ended up clearing the upgrade, by the way), and about five minutes before boarding a guy starts standing next to me. After a minute he said “are they boarding yet?” I responded “no, they’ll start boarding in about five minutes.” He then said “I’m in seating area three, I guess that’s not too bad.” I nodded, not knowing what to say. After a moment of silence, he said “what seating area are you in?”
I didn’t want to gloat and say “I’m in first class, I don’t have a seating area,” so I simply inspected my boarding pass as if I didn’t know what seating area I was. His eyes immediately peered at my boarding pass, and he said “that’s weird, you don’t have a seating area, there must be an error. If I were you, I would try to board with first class. Even though you’ll probably get shot down, it can’t hurt to try.” What a brilliant idea, I thought — “you know, I’m going to try that,” I responded.
Sure enough when first class boarding started, I boarded and am let on. As he walks by my seat 15 minutes later, he said “you cheated.” I simply shrugged my shoulders and said “guess I got upgraded, not sure why.”
I’ve gotta say, I was caught off guard when he asked what seating area I was in, and I really wasn’t in the mood to say “first class,” because I’d feel like I’m trying to brag about it (which isn’t the goal). At the same time, he specifically asked, and since this was an Airbus, it was inevitable that he would walk past me. Oops.
How would you have handled the situation?
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