Originally Posted by
tvtd
Today's drama is due to the flight being "oversold". Our agent in ATL just offered $500 to give up a seat with the next flight availability six hours from now. There are four standbys awaiting seat assignment and I know if someone gives up their seat one of those standbys will get it. Just seems like a backward approach, like how USAirways used to operate.
Based on this situation that you observed, there's no actual data to make any judgement about how this one situation worked out for DL.
First off, you don't know whether all of those four names waiting on the screen were actual confirmed passengers without seats assigned, non-confirmed passengers standing by for a different flight (for Same Day standby or another reason), or most likely, non-revs. The screen makes no distinction between these very different reasons why someone would be waiting for a seat assignment, and none of these reasons except the first would be of any concern to Delta in deciding which type of equipment to use. Only four names awaiting seat assignment on the screen is a low number if you've ever seen that screen when it stretches to multiple pages of names, mostly all non-revs.
Also, "oversold" doesn't necessarily mean that anyone actually gets bumped. Gate agents proactively solicit volunteers when there is a risk of needing to bump someone. However, in many cases, by the 15 minute mark, it turns out that the volunteers aren't needed due to other no-shows, and are then asked to board - when this happens, Delta succeeded in maximizing the seats sold without going over. For better or for worse, we've seen many comments and complaints on this forum about the handling of the VDB process, and it's clear that volunteering and then being asked to board at the last minute is not an uncommon occurrence.
Unless you have access to Travelnet or Deltamatic to see who the standbys are and what happened with the volunteer situation, there's not really any evidence here that Delta lost out on anything with this flight.
Originally Posted by
tvtd
If I may, how does one purchase a ticket without a seat assigned?
In addition to your situation of not wanting to pay the upcharge for the remaining available seats at booking, other situations can include booking through third party sites, interlining, re-routes/IRROPs where someone did not specifically go in and select a seat when the booking was made. Usually these names do end up on the awaiting seat assignment list, shown together with but ahead of standby passengers, who of course also don't have a seat and are assigned at the gate in a similar manner.