Well that’s too bad. The travel websites and Iberia.com make it seem like bidding is always an option for open seats.

Evidently Iberia has decided to forgo some money from upgrade bidding rather than risk encouraging folks to follow this practice. That seems like a rather dubious strategy.

Let’s say hypothetically Iberia averages 4 empty business class seats on international flights. They could set a minimum bid of, say, $800 per seat, which means they are losing revenue of at least $3,200 (and probably more) for every international flight.

And Iberia is deliberately forgoing this revenue because they are worried about people skipping business class fares in order to bid from coach? That seems unlikely. The folks who can actually afford the exorbitant prices of business class are either very wealthy, or are flying corporate, and in both cases those folks are gonna pay the full freight just to ensure they get their business class seat. If they can afford it or the company is paying for it, why risk having to ride in coach?

There’s no way in hell I, or really anyone riding coach, is shelling out $5-6k each direction for a business class ticket, so what exactly is Iberia deterring by forgoing bid revenue?

I’m not arguing by the way - Iberia’s strategy is what it is - I just find it interesting.