From a PR perspective, this was a must. UA is getting hammered in the press for "playing with semantics to mislead customers" (per a column in the Guardian). I guess 70% has become a magic number for some reason.

I'll be curious how this plays out with my flight from HNL-SFO on May 30. I've been watching the flight daily and it magically goes from lightly booked (all buckets at "9" and pretty open seat map) to an average of 30 stand by's clearing each day. And of course FC goes from 14 seats blocked at T-25 to booked full at push back. My plan was turn down the UG and grab 3 seats in Y (based on load), but by T-1 those Y seats got filled. Wouldn't be flying at all if the job didn't mandate this particular trip. Could be interesting.