E- 97% Full; E+ 10% Full

I am on an international flight (777) where E- is basically full and E+ is basically empty. I do not seem to remember that many flights that have this unbalanced ratio.

How does UA try and balance this out and fill up the plane? Do they just try and sell E+ to people, or do they sell E- and bump people from E- to E+?

This.

You see this a lot in leisure markets or during the holidays where there are few Elites travelling.

I had an exit row to myself while E- was almost full on an AMS-IAD flight.

I was surprised to walk to the bathroom and see the packed E- section, i figured the plane was mostly vacant, but nope.

That's how it looking so far (e+ pretty empty, e- full) for me on an upcoming flight from GVA to EWR. I hope it stays that way! (yes, I admit that's a bit selfish). Although I'd actually prefer for my miles + cash upgrade to clear, but that looks unlikely as biz is pretty full. On second thought, it's a bit surprising if e+ is pretty empty is biz is pretty full. I would have thought that more elites / biz travelers would impact both. . .

It's a nice hidden perk -- welcome surprise if you get lucky and something we will enjoy fleet wide.

Though wonder how active PMCO attendants will be with enforcement.

They balance it with passengers' cash, if the passengers are willing. If unwilling, they leave it unbalanced and expect the FAs to enforce the border.

They were enforcing it on my 777 flight today. I heard the FA say, "Sorry, you have to pay for Economy Plus," a bunch this morning.

I've seen that a lot on the LAX-PVG or PVG-LAX flights. One of the reasons for this, I think, is a lot of tour groups get booked together into E- at a super discounted fare. So the E- seats tend to fill up pretty quickly.

When this happens, those of us in E+ will usually have a betting pool to see how many E- seat poachers try to come into E+. Eventually it becomes annoying though, as the FA's repeat the announcement not to move to E+ in both English & Mandarin over and over. One time, from LAX-PVG, a passenger decided if the FA wasn't going to let him jump into empty E+ row for free, he thought he could get it by "suddenly" feeling very sick and the FA would give him sympathy to move there. This only resulted in the FA making an announcement asking for a doctor (there was none) and then the Captain announcing he was diverting the flight to HNL due to the sick passenger (as we were 1/2 way across the Pacific). You wouldn't believe how much yelling there was at this guy in Mandarin. I don't understand the language, but I'm pretty sure everybody was telling him to stop pretending. Well about 10 minutes later, the passenger had a "miraculous" recovery and went back to his seat. The flight got to PVG only a few minutes late.

Saw this on SFO-AMS (on KL, obviously) over the holidays, too.

I would say an E+ row to myself on an LAX-EWR a319 evening flight to stretch out was better than getting the upgrade and be packed into the 8 seats in front, especially since Senator Schumer and company were up there.

I had the window/aisle to myself EWR-ZRH on the 763 until they shut the door and some guy came up from E- and took the empty window. He told the FA he was Premier and they were like, okay.

Way to call the pax bluff. I'm not entirely surprised by the shenanigans attempted on a flight to/from PVG (or China in general). Lots of line jumping and hopping over one another to get a better position there.

isnt there some safety considerations about distributing weight equally throughout the plane?

This is what I suspect is happening.

Oh well, at least this is a change I would like to see.

All M+ elites, as well as E+ traveler (paid one-time or annual pass), are entitled for E+.

Do you really want to see someone that can get something for nothing?

With this load, I will take it as granted and I take my whole row for the rest of the flight.

Trust me - it is only a piece of the iceberg.

Yes, pilots will have to distribute weight accordingly. I was on IAH-LIM flight, 75% in F/C/J, 25% E+ and 95% E- (all Canadian & Japanese tour groups). We were delayed for 20min on the tarmac trying to distribute weight. Not sure who and how they picked people from E- to move to E+.