Originally Posted by
pilotalan
Indirectly.
FAA has a max ratio of pax to Flight Attendants. On some planes, with some configurations, you will have a small number of seats that if they book, they have to add another FA.
So they will block those seats until they project that the flight will sell out, then they can justify adding another FA.
They don't want to add an FA, open the seats, only sell the windows and aisles, then have one more FA than the passenger load actually requires.
On US carriers the rule is based on seats the plane is fitted with, even if blocked from assignment. That's why AA had some 738s with a few middle seats permanently configured as blocked. They would not be opened up for sale at all.
There is also a difference between seats blocked from assignment and blocked from sale. UA will occasionally block F seats from sale and not that on the flight status. Typically this happens when Y is oversold and they expect opups to solve that issue. But the actual seat assignments are possible in the system. Unless they are the seats allocated for crew rest on long-haul flights with augmented crews. Then they are not assignable either.