Originally Posted by
sinoflyer
Thanks for the earlier posters who covered most of my points before I had the chance to revisit this thread. I'll add that, other than some flights on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays that are the most popular for domestic business travel, the rest of the flights during the week likely require discounting to some extent to fill the J cabin. Besides, OP's fare is ticketed in V, which suggests that the flight is either lightly booked or probably will not reach a critical point of overbooking. If UA can generate $600 from a V bucket right now (from the fare basis, at least 30 days in advance) with so many seats still available to sell, IMO that's a win-win for both UA and OP.
OP is not ticketed in 'V', he's ticketed in 'P'. Despite the fare basis code starting with V, this is a P fare. The V fare basis just means there is a dual inventory check and there must be inventory in both the coach V bucket and the FC P bucket to purchase the fare. Purchasing this fare will pull from the P bucket only, and not the coach V bucket. Flights are generally pretty lightly loaded more than 30 days out because few business pax buy their flight that far out.