Originally Posted by
gateguard0
Probably. If it says 4 are left and I try to book 5, it will increase the price and fare class for all 5 passengers.
That said, I used to mimic this with mock bookings for X passengers to see how many were left in that fare bucket. Just yesterday, a certain flight over a month away had at least 9 seats available in L as it has had for the last several weeks. This morning, it only had 2 available in L. Yes, it's completely possible that 7+ were purchased overnight, but that doesn't stop me from scratching my head a little.
This reminds me of the conversations over at the "R Games" thread, where the practice of arbitrarily adjusting the available number of executive/first class upgrade seats on the plane is
very well known, and is manipulated according to demand, time until flight, and many other considerations. Just because R goes from 9 to 0 doesn't mean AC has sold all nine seats -- they just
hope to sell those seats instead of giving them away as upgrades. I'd bet you're right -- L didn't go from 9 to 2 overnight because of sales. Looks like AC is going to be playing psychology games with paying passengers as well.