Originally Posted by
cxfan1960
There are still at least 9 seats for sale in each Y subclass of every flight. So Y shouldn't be close to full. However, it is not a good assumption that your neighbouring seats will be empty unless you are a CX DM, in which case they may block your adjacent seat.
I'd caution that in the case of a very empty flight in all/most cabins, CX may be willing to overbook Y by "a lot."
What do I mean by "a lot?" In the usual case of a full/overbooked flight, inventory will normally drop to Y0 B0 etc. or Y2 B2 H0 etc. That said, on a recent CX870 HKG-SFO, I was seeing J9 ... I9, W9 ... E9, Y9 ... O9 up until day of departure and a wide open seat map until T-48, but still got a Y-W op-up at the gate (I was the only op-up I believe). Y went out with every seat filled. This suggests to me that since W and J were so empty, CX was willing to take any seat sales they could get (in this case, mostly in Y), and let the empty forward cabins pick up the overflow if needed.
March is a somewhat off-peak time for US-HKG travel up front, so I'd caution against hoping for an empty flight too soon.