Those BASTARDS!!

That's a horrible joke to play on a paying customer.

Which airline was it?

I had a hotel give me an "upgrade" like that once. They switched me from the lovely room I'd booked in advance to a far inferior room, and had the gall to insist that my new room was "superior."

They couldn't list one single way in which the new room was better than my old one, but they wouldn't back down from their position that the switch had been an upgrade.