Originally Posted by DC777Fan

Let's talk capacity ...

Lufthansa serves ~15 destinations in the USA with maybe an average of 2 flights per day to each US city between multiple frequencies and accounting for FRA, MUC and DUS. That's 60 flights per day (both directions) x 8 F seats = 480 seats per day. Accounting for UA, LX, etc (anyone able to book SQ suites btw?), we're looking at maybe 1000 seats per day in first class? Even if 25,000 people booked tickets, we're talking about 25 days worth of seats in 330 days worth of schedule--and that's assuming just about everyone booked F and not J which would be thousands of seats per day per direction.

This is a drop in the bucket in terms of capacity. Ultimately, with the exception of a few high traffic dates, I'm guessing there's not a ton of lost opportunity cost in terms of selling these tickets -- many of them would've gone out empty or available for award.

To me the key questions:

1) How many seats that are not part of UA/LH JV were booked? These should cost UA real money...
2) Does the positive PR of honoring the tickets outweigh the negatives of wanting to "protect" the premium cabins exclusivity?
3) Does UA feel any pressure from LH/LX to not have a bunch of freeloaders in their premium cabins?
4) Is the third party insured for pricing errors?

Ultimately, my completely wild guess is that UA negotiates a settlement with the DOT to allow one booking per person as multiple bookings is indicative of abuse.