Originally Posted by JohnAx
...Unfortunately, the flight appears to be pretty full - about the only thing on offer is Y1 in the cheap seats. The front shows J7. I suppose that doesn't give the revenuers much incentive to give me one more D, but is there any useful strategy for shaking the seat-tree?
Nope, if it really is Y1 and 0 for all other coach buckets, then the flight is already oversold and AA is filling those J seats with the oversells; but is willing to bump them, and pay USD 500 in vouchers or whatever, if someone pays for a J seat. The D revenue is simply too low to cover the voucher cost, so you can either hope for some no-shows (probably mis-connects on the day of travel, as I suspect LAX-SJO is mostly vacation travel) or try for a different flight which isn't oversold this much. Y1 almost always means Y0 but willing to oversell (ie. J/F space is there).