Originally Posted by
tnj100
Interestingly, I successfully stood by on a flight on Friday that would seem to contradict this. Y was full, F was empty. I arrived at the gate and asked what the chances were of standing by, and the GA said: "in coach? Zero. First, no problem." And sure enough, she handed me a boarding pass and off I went.
Maybe more interestingly, the stickers haven't come out of my account yet (though they have for the other flight that day). Hmm.
This was exactly my experience on 19 Dec. Since I had a way of upgrading, I was able to clear directly into F since there were F seats going out empty. If I had no way of upgrading, or was looking for a coach seat, I would not have flown on that flight.
Yeah, so as trinity confirms, what you were seeing was oversales being accommodated.
If after oversales and confirmed pax desiring an upgrade have all been accomodated, there are still F seats left but no Y seats, my experience is that you can indeed clear straight into F, provided you're willing to burn the stickers. The agents adding you to the list annotate your standby request that you are desiring an upgrade, so that helps the GAs identify the best way to clear people onto the flight.
Can one of the GAs around here confirm whether RI non-status pax would warrant op-ups to F, or do they have to wait for Y seats?