Originally Posted by
FWAAA
Seat assignments are irrelevant, as the possession or absence of a seat asssignment has nothing to do with AA's IDB priority, as I posted yesterday.
Why do posters keep talking about seat assignments?
There may be other airlines where seat assignments are relevant, but not at AA.
As a GA, I can confirm that it does. Persons without assigned seats are given gate passes with their flight that put them on the PALL list as OSs (oversales). Most of the time these are cleared. However, in cases where the flight will have IDBs, they are processed by last-to-check-in OS is denied first order.
So, passengers who have confirmed seats (in their PNR) will not be put on the OS list, therefore have a very unlikely chance of being IDB as these come from the OS list.
The computer will give out seats to anyone who checks in until there are no more to give (even if pax with seat assignments have not checked in) and list them as an OS in the PALL list.
If agents follow the rules, people with assigned seats should never be IDB. That is the point of listing pax as OSs.
So I can tell from this, that the passengers did not have assigned seats in their PNR (something the group desk should have done if possible) and were some of the last people to check in for the flight.
PS: OS lists can be categorized by Oneworld status as well. So if an EP is an OS, even if he is the last pax to check in, he will get a seat before other OSs.