I beg to differ : my source at CX here in LA...the person is in charge of
"seats control" told me that it's not a common practice , but under some
circumstances , they even overbooked the North American flights by 2 seats
in First.
You have to understand , sometimes a reservation is "perfectly" booked : meaning all pertinent infos are entered ( tkt nbr , FF nbr..) but when some agent(s) from high volume agency call CX Sales Office directly , CX will try
their best to accomodate their request on sold out flight in F .
CX will try to "flight firm" : try to call all FC pax on the flight and just pretend to reconfirm their flight for them , hoping that they will take the opportunity
to cancel . And sometimes , they "study" the PNRs and deem that some of the FC pax might be good prospect for no show , so they go ahead and over
book the flight in F .