Originally Posted by
EntropyTheory
I'm actually not sure. My UA buddy says Y is over by 5 and there are 4 open seats in J.
Ok, so either they sold one more ticket than seats and meant to do that or they didn't mean to do that; doesn't really matter to you whether Y=0 or Y=-1 from United's perspective; from your perspective if there is one no-show then no VDB, if there are 0 no-shows then someone gets a VDB (hopefully you!). Neither you nor United can say for sure whether there will be 0 or 1+ no-shows.
Looking at past flight history for mainline flights between ORF and IAD shows that there may have been a downgauge - normally it's operated with an A320 or a 738, my flight is operated with an A319.
Unless you have screenshot/recollection from when you bought the ticket, hard to say. It may have always been planned to be an A319. The holiday weekend schedule is so wacky, with extra domestic flights, fewer int'l flights, and most travel being leisure vs business, nothing is "normal".
The flight is no longer available to be booked on ua.com as far as I can tell and, like I mentioned as well, EF is showing zero availability in all fare classes.
That just means they don't want to sell any more tickets. That means a VDB is more likely than if they were still selling tickets, but doesn't mean it is "likely".
In all of these "over by 1" or "over by 2" situations it's just luck. If it's over by 30 then yes you can have a solid expectation.
Good luck!