Originally Posted by
deac83
My related experience this past Sunday, Had to move from DFW-PHL-EDI do to maint delays on inbound aircraft. Took the only two 'open' seats on DFW-LHR flght 20. Only one of us had a seat initially confirmed. J=0, X=0 4hours before the flight.
What I took from all of this (and I've seen it on other trans-con flights), AA now will over sell Y and stop selling J and X. I'm missing the long game AA has for this, they are not offering to sell any of those empty J and X seats, but are happy to do last minute EVIP UGs and X to J free UGs.
This entire process seems messed up now, AA was willing to pay us $800, when we had EVIP's in the queue that were going to clear.
You are correct. AA is definitely overselling Y into W/J and overselling W into J (thereby underselling J). Revenue management will only do it when Y is oversold and the goal is to claim revenue that otherwise would go unclaimed. It's my understanding that is largely a manual process and one that's not automated yet influenced by historical sales data based on day of week, time of year, time of day and prior year sales for the particular class. Incidentally the availability of C space is now nearly 100% automated by algorithm.
The pro-active calling of passengers is handled by a completely different 'same day' department which is an extension of customer relations. The purpose is to minimize impact and large payouts at the gate due to bumping rules. What you experienced clearly was a case of the right arm not talking to the left arm and some groups work off systems that do not have a overall picture of whats going on (Sabre vs SAGE vs others).