Originally Posted by
neo_781
It's not that they won't oversell any premium cabin its that they won't for the highest cabin on the plane. In the case of a 3-cabin aircraft they won't oversell First but will oversell Business and bump people from Business up to first.
A year ago, UA was selling capacity plus 1 ond ORD-HKG and ORD-PEK.
Originally Posted by
joel67
I'm aware that Business is routinely oversold by the number of First Class seats still available, but what I appear to be seeing goes way beyond that. In this case they've stopped selling FC seats (F0) and all six FC seats are assigned, so there's no overflow except bumping people (upgrades, of course).
Sometimes on transpacific flights, UA will reduce F capacity for sale to make more J seats available for (over)sale.
Originally Posted by
Lori_Q
I watched an oversell situation unfold on a busy Friday for NRT-SFO on a 747. The seat map was nearly full, yet they were still selling C and D fares up until ~6 hours before flight time. By the time I got to Narita, they were looking for voluntary downgraders -- repeatedly and urgently. A lot of Y -> C upgraders were downgraded involuntarily (and compensated, and given decent seats in Y).
It looks like more people showed for that flight than expected-- it happens sometimes. I doubt UA sold that flight any differently than any others in the market, so you might have seen a random but rare event.
Originally Posted by
Lori_Q
Since my upgrade never cleared, I didn't get to take part in this game
but it was interesting to see that they were still selling those $4k one-way C fares even though seats weren't available.
I'm guessing that they do that on every flight in this market but that this time they lost the bet. (If they were downgrading confirmed upgrades for paid overbooks, I'm not sure they 'lost' the bet in a financial sense, just from a flight planning stance).