Originally Posted by Steve M

How are you determining that all seats are sold? Just because they're not available for advance seating assignment doesn't necessarily mean that they're occupied. Some seats can be held until day of departure for assignment. Check to see if you could by two additional J seats on that flight at any price. If seats are still available for sale, it's very likely that there will not be a problem with your current tickets. If no additional tickets can be purchased, this may or may not mean that there are more confirmed passengers than available seats. You'd need access to internal airline systems to determine that.

Originally Posted by Steve M

Having said that, it's quite possible (if not probable) given your downgauge situation that there are more passengers with confirmed J reservations on that flight than there are seats on the aircraft. In that situation, what happens is just as you describe: the passengers that can't be assigned seats (because they don't exist) retain their confirmed reservation, and are told that it will be dealt with at the airport. This has happened to me.

Originally Posted by Steve M

What can they do at the airport? Between now and the day of departure, some passengers currently on the flight may cancel or switch flights, and they won't sell additional tickets to replace them unless enough people do so to truly have open seats. On day of departure, there may be no-shows or mis-connects. If none of those happen and everyone shows up, then you don't get on the flight.

That's how Reservations is trained to deal with such situations. They may not even be able to easily tell that the flight is oversold - I'm not sure. What they can tell is that you have confirmed reservations on the flight and their training is to handle it as you describe.

That's a tough one. How flexible are your travel plans? If you get to the airport and there aren't J seats, you might be offered a downgrade to Y or PE, but you don't have to take that. They would almost certainly put you on alternate flights in J (which may or may not be on the same day) if you'd prefer that over a downgrade. Another option is to switch to a different flight ahead of time. If you can get them to admit that the flight is oversold, I would hope that Reservations would be willing to waive any fees that would normally apply to such a change. The trick here is to get the agent on your side, so they're sympathetic to your situation and want to help you. If you're a jerk to them on the phone, they're more likely to do things by the book and not want to make an exception. At least that's my experience with such things.

If you must be on that particular flight, then the best thing to do (aside from hoping that there are cancellations in the meantime that open up seats) is to get to the airport early and hope for the best. There's not much you can do to resolve it before then. They were aware of the oversale situation at the time they did the change of gauge, so bringing this to their attention isn't going to do anything. They can't install more J seats in the aircraft between now and day of departure. And, they're not going to kick someone else that also has confirmed paid J reservations off of the flight or downgrade them to make room for you.

Your situation is unfortunate. It's a corner case where there isn't a good way for either you or they to deal with it, so you have to choose from the available options. Good luck!