I almost had it happen last Monday on a P fare from rsw-atl-sfo. I've been flying that route on A fares for the last few years and have never had a problem. Lately, when looking to book a seat in First, I'm no longer seeing A fares, so I'm buying P or D.

I checked in online, printed my boarding pass showing my seat assignment in 3b and went to the kiosk to do a bag drop. The kiosk screen showed a message saying that I did not have a seat assigment but would be given one at the gate. I asked one of the agents what was up, and for the next 30 minutes three different agents passed my boarding pass around and typed away furiously. Finally one of the agents told me that there had been an equipment change and gave me the speech about the P fare technically being a coach fare and saying I would be seated in coach.

He said he'd be my gate agent, and that he'd try to get me an exit row seat. I said I'd see him at the gate, and he said, "If I were you I'd go to the bar first, then the gate." I took his advice.

When I went to the gate, the agent smiled at me and handed me a boarding pass for 2d!

So everything went fine, but I have three round trips booked in P on Delta (one to Hawaii) and yeah, I've now added getting bumped to coach as something to worry about on my trips. Although I always read on FT that you could get bumped to coach on an A fare, it never happened to me on the dozens of flights I took.

I do wonder if they factor medallion status into this. I'm only a gold, but if I was almost getting bumped as a gold who paid $1600.00 for my ticket, who were the folks who didn't get bumped, all full-fare paying? I usually assume most of the people around me in F are on upgrades.