Originally Posted by
Symmetre
Paid J seats? Absolutely, and the vast majority of bums in those seats do, in fact, pay full pop to get there. J seats exist as revenue generators, not as free rewards for FF's. Offering to upgrade top tier fliers if and when they can't fully sell out the J cabin is nice, but AC will obviously prefer to sell the seats at full price. And most of the time, they do.
I suspect, yes and no.
Obviously they like to sell J seats. However I suspect a small fraction is filled with people paying full J, with more and more of these seats now sold as Z.
In addition, upgrades are turning into less and less of a perk for FFs on a low fare, and more and more as a revenue generator. With people paying for a higher fare in the hope of an upgrade. Or latitude plus confirmed upgrade as in reality a deep discount mechanism for seats that are expected to go unsold as J/C/D/Z.
I would argue that the current E/SE program, fare structure, and inventory management, are designed precisely for that purpose.