Lawyerneering

I've been on several flights recently (including hub to hub, hub to spoke, and int'l) that went out with open seats in F. Int'l I can understand, but this shouldn't happen in domestic. And it weren't as if there were non revs in these seats. Completely empty.

eng3

Was the flight CPU eligible? If it was not then that may happen. Sometimes if Y is extremely oversold they will upgrade someone just to make room but that is somewhat rare.
If it is CPU eligible and there were still people on the list, they should upgrade them. If you're on the list and this happens, you should say something.

I've had one occasion where the seat next to me was empty. I noticed on the app the seat was shown as upgraded. I mentioned this to the FA after takeoff, she had the BP and forgetten to upgrade the person.

I've had occasion where I was #1 on the list on a TCON, F was full when boarding started, but there was an empty seat on the app after boarding. We were delayed due to paperwork or something. I went to the front, asked the FA if the seat was empty, he said yes and asked me to talk to the GA. The GA said "all F is full", the FA looked up and said "no it isnt" The GA went back to the counter and returned with my upgrade.

I've also had a time where many people in back complained but the GA refused and said it was full. F flew out half empty.

If you find yourself #1 on the list, its a good idea to pay close attention.

Lawyerneering

Yes, they were CPU eligible flights. Most recent was IAH-EWR where 2 F seats were open with people on the upgrade list.

WineCountryUA

Not all domestic flights are CPU eligible -- PS, (now) most flights to Hawaii (except West Coast SFO/LAX), ....

Occasionally a broken seat

Occasionally no remaining CPU eligible passaengers (or some have refused -- wanting to stay with their companions or for some short flights prefer their economy seat)

But most of the time it is a late misconnect and the GA "doesn't have the time" to take care of the newly open seat.

jjmoore

Learned something interesting tonight on my DEN-GRR flight UA5393 .... 2 seats remained empty in first.

UA will not op-up pax in Y in order to accommodate standby pax. There was a group of 3 on standby.... 2 seats open in Y, 2 seats open in F, all CPU's accommodated..... they split the standby group up and only took 2. The 3rd pax in that party had to overnight and will fly in the morning.

The question that remains... will UA op up for revenue standbys, but not for non-rev standbys? I was not sure if tonight's standby group was rev or non-rev.... Maybe I will see a more specific instance sometime in the future.... but it took me a long time to witness this specific situation that I saw tonight.....

Anyone else have input on this one? Was just curious.

lincolnjkc

IIRC, Non-Rev standbys have to list for all cabins they want to standby for -- hence why you may see the same name on the economy and upgrade standby lists -- and there's some disincentive from listing for premium cabins (taxes? fees? or maybe that's only for international flights?)

But if it was a Non-Rev standby they were more-or-less in control of if they wanted to be on that flight or not -- they could have listed for the front cabin and been accommodated if there were empty seats and no weight restrictions or other limitations for the aircraft's performance or that seat.

jjmoore

Interestingly, whether these standbys were rev or non-rev, they only accommodated 2 of the 3 to fill up Y and did not op up someone in Y to F to open the Y seat for the remaining standby (which was there at the gate). None of the standbys were on the upgrade list for F. The 2 empty seats in F remained open and the flight went out as such.

There is no way the flight would have been weight restricted, as it was an EMB-175, which I have flown many times on flights far more than the 1000 miles from DEN-GRR, and have never been weight restricted once. I highly doubt that would have been the issue..... though there is always that possibility.

NoLaGent

Why should they OpUp someone to accommodate standbys in the back?

The only time that happens is when there's an oversold situation, which obviously wasn't the case here.

jjmoore

Agreed.....

I question whether they would op up someone in Y to accommodate a displaced revenue standby pax... in my eyes, nothing to lose here for UA. If the standby pax was non-rev buddy pass or something of the sort, I would certainly understand accommodating as many as Y could handle while not giving out free upgrades to accommodate additional pax that didn't pay for their seats.

I was hoping someone could shed some light on how UA handles situations like this in a rev vs. non-rev standby situation.

emcampbe

Typically, they don't opup to make room in Y for standbys.

There are certain situations where they will. For example, in trying to clear a backlog from IRROPs, they almost always will.

O62

Wife and I were on EWR-DTW Friday (E70) #2 and #3 on upgrade list with F booked and checked-in full 6/6. Get on plane (7A and 7B) and notice toward end of boarding there are still 3 empty seats. I ask one FA about it ("Just a minute") and then another ("Oh that's a gate agent issue") and then door is closed - seats still empty. One FA brings up a woman from back of E- to occupy 2A.

Checked the app upon door closing and the 3 F seats are shown as open and the upgrade lists Capacity 6, Booked 5, Checked in 3.

Even though it's a short hop, we weren't very happy since as Silvers we don't exactly get a lot of upgrades and we clearly would have gotten the last 2 seats if the GA had done her job. Flight was on time, the plane had been there for over an hour ahead of time, so they weren't in any big rush. Plus it seems like there was some degree of shenanigans going on with the random woman in F and the FA's not wanting to talk about it.

Wrote in, we'll see.

Lani1

63 flights this year - yet to see an empty FC seat.

stevendorechester

While there is no way to prove it chances are they upgraded an employee or one of their friends. It wasn' t random that is certain; it is very possible that the gate agent willfully kept the seats open for this reason. Upgrading a friend or employee at the gate leaves a paper trail; doing it onboard when the doors are closed doesn't.

tuolumne

The way Non revenue travel works is the NRSA lists for the highest available cabin in which they'd like to travel in.

So if they only listed for Y, and there were seats only open in F, then they would be left behind.

If the only listed for 3-cabin business, and only Y seats remained, they'd go Y. Conversly, if only 3-class F seats remained, they'd be left behind.

findark

I would guess that #1 was the one who got brought up front, and based on the "Booked: 5" they didn't manually offload the other two no-shows.