Originally Posted by
makfan
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.
Right. This makes perfect sense from a revenue perspective.
Especially on this route, where they can and do often sell last minute, very expensive premium fares.
What sound businesss in their right mind would voluntarily turn down people willing to pay thousands of $$ in exchange for providing complementary upgrades to people... Makes 0 sense.