elmurid

They oversold first class removed all of our seating assignments and economy by 30 seats. No one is taking responsibility in this disaster. This is not first class even by American standards. Boooooo! SFO to mco

navydevildoc

Did they change the equipment? If they had it booked for a 3 row 737 or 4 row Airbus F cabin, then had to swap in a non-remodeled VX Airbus, this can happen.

A lot of people avoid Row 3 and 4 in First while they are going through the transition, just because of this.

JacksonFlyer

Just out of interest, how do you know they oversold first by 50%, did the GA or crew tell you that? Many times I have received an e-mail from AS weeks prior to travel asking it I would consider a change from first presumably due to an equipment change or maybe they did oversell a flight; I have never responded and I have never been downgraded but then again, those flight I paid full first class. I am guessing that when they do overbook, upgrades go first and then "possibly" award tickets (don't really know). However, I think it unlikely that an entire first cabin are all full revenue passengers....could be wrong. As mentioned above, perhaps it was an equipment swap.

olouie

Very common on the SFO to MCO route. I wrote in and got 3k miles as comp (upgrade removed at boarding and premium seats given away). I stay away from AS in this and the DC routed where equipment swaps are common.

sltlyamusd

It looks like today’s flight switched from a reconfigured to non-reconfigured A320, which would mean 8 F instead of 12 F, matching what the OP described. Though oversold by 30 in Y seems highly unlikely to me.

winston vickers

A couple of years ago, I booked a Hawaiian Airlines Vacation package in F. 2 days before the departure I got phone call from Hawaiian advising me that the F was overbooked and was I willing to downgrade to Y for the trip to the islands and keep my F return. In return they offered 2 F R/T vouchers anywhere in their system. After 10 seconds of thinking about it, took them up on their offer. It was Valentines weekend and they treated us like gold. Free drinks, no charges for bags, 2 seats in the bulkhead row. We then booked F to SYD for free a year later using the vouchers.

ezefllying

That’s the way (for an airline) to do it. Rather than leaving a nasty taste in your mouth (and a not-irrational desire to sue or complain or do something), you probably walked away feeling well-cared-for by Hawaiian. Meanwhile, I once watched a United agent tell my company’s nonagenarian chairman-emeritus/beloved living mascot that he was being downgraded from his paid F ticket because of an aircraft swap and that he should write into Customer Care on United.com in hopes of a $200 voucher (since, of course, he wasn’t “really” in F, because he was in discount F, which, in the underegulated world of airline consumer rules, “technically” is an economy fare).

Airlines would be well-advised to accept that operational downgrades should not be treated as an opportunity to shortchange passengers. If you’ve gotta kick someone out of first, make it up to them, even if it costs a couple extra hundred bucks. After all, these are often your higher-margin travelers. At least in one case, United’s chintziness caused the carrier to lose an F passenger — and irritate the executives of a midsize corporation.

michaelstant

Alaska doesn’t oversell flights in economy by 30. In general, they do not oversell flights at all. I could see how the eq swap could make it seem as if was oversold, but it appears it wasn’t an intentional oversell.

eddiehuang97

Maybe the OP saw 30+ people on the waitlist and thought it was oversold by 30. All Saver fare passengers w/o a seat assignment goes onto the waitlist.

flytoeat

Unless AS has recently changed their revenue management philosophy, that is not correct.

From here: https://www.alaskaair.com/content/ab...booked-flights

We will handle an overbooked flight consistently.

We sometimes overbook flights because people often book reservations without using them. If you are curious whether your flight has more reservations than the number of seats onboard, feel free to ask our reservations or airport personnel. We are happy to provide you current information on the status of your flight; however, the number of reservations can change, so the information we provide you in advance may differ from the information you receive at check-in.

navydevildoc

They have to put that on there for the exact reason this thread exists. Sometimes there may not be enough seats to passengers due to an equipment swap or some other issue.

But as a general rule AS does not typically oversell. I can only think of a single time a GA had to make the announcement asking for volunteers to be bumped.

flytoeat

OK, in the spirit of the holidays, let's just agree to disagree. But my information comes directly from AS revenue management personnel, and AS has oversell algorithms for every flight. It's a core component of RM.

Here are the latest available stats: https://www.transportation.gov/sites...-2019-atcr.pdf

navydevildoc

Maybe a better way to say it is they don’t aggressively oversell? In the VX days it was VERY common to have people bumped.

So we can agree they oversell, but they have the algorithm tuned to rarely effect passengers?

Plus, Happy Holidays!

PVDtoDEL

AS definitely overbooks - in my last 5-6 BOS-SEA trips, every single flight has been over by 1 or 2. However, the noshow rate is a lot higher than 1 or 2, so we usually end up leaving with plenty of standby pax.

James Moore

They're trying to handle it electrically rather than gate announcements. I've had several emails this year asking if I'd like to be bumped, and you're supposed to reply to the mail and then talk to the agent. If you're hearing an announcement, it's not the first thing they've tried.