Originally Posted by
beckoa
I think there is merit to the statement AS is withholding F for sale due to the chances of an aircraft swap. I've seen a couple planes go from F0 to F7 the day before departure and the F seat map (not a good indicator) was not full. Now this may have been folks changing plans last minute, but interesting to speculate.
There are some markets in which AS knows they historically don't sell much F where they will block out F and try to oversell Y (by the same number of seats) until 24 or 48 hours before departure. I see this most often on E175s. (PMVX did this too)
To the OP, when the fare page says "x seats left at $yyy" that doesn't mean there are only x seats left in that cabin of service, just x seats at that price (i.e. in that fare class). So it could well be F6P2 with six (or more open on the F seatmap) and say "only 2 seats left at $549" without being in violation of their FAA-mandated substance policies