Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: San Francisco, CA
Programs: AA (PPro/3MM/Admirals Club), AS, UA, Marriott (Gold), HHonors (Gold), Accor (Plat)
Posts: 2,602
I know it is frustrating how they handle the premium cabins on this flight, but let's say they have sold 72 Y, 15 J and 4 F seats.
They could cut off Y sales and just show J5/F6 in the fare inventory.
Instead, they will probably show Y7/J5/F6 (I'm not going to drill down to the individual buckets). For every Y they sell, they will decrement one of the premium seat buckets.
Prior to departure, the gate agent will sort out the fact that they ended up selling 76 Y, 17 J and 5 F by rolling 1 person to F and upgrading 4 people to the J cabin.
By doing it this way, they sold some premium seats and a few economy seats. If they just upgraded everyone to open up Y seats, they would only be able to sell more Y fares.
I know that nobody likes it, but it's hard to argue that it doesn't make sense as a way to maximize revenue. It would hurt less if they would upgrade 4 more people from J to F and then upgrade 4 more from the waitlist, leaving the open seats in Y, but AA has never done this as far as I am aware.
Last edited by makfan; Jan 16, 2017 at 5:15 pm
Reason: Fix some things that didn't make sense