Originally Posted by midlevels

Overbooked: Yes.

However, you'd be surprised how many students have SL/GO status or even higher. If they travel home 3 times a year, it's not difficult to maintain status. When I was based in US for studies, I was able to maintain SQ*G annually without any difficulty just by making trips to and from home.

Depends though. On a recent flight I took ORD-HKG, most of the students were mainlanders and not HK people and the vast majority did not seem to have any FFP associated with their booking as their BPs did not show it.