One way of upgrading...
 

Knowing that BA is tough on upgrades, I saw one way to upgrade last week. I was on a HKG-LHR flight and I saw at least 20 people upgraded from economy to business because they were way overbooked! And that was only on one flight. BA has two flights from HKG-LHR leaving within 30 minutes of each other. They were switching people around both flights and I know that two of my friends with an economy ticket got upgraded even with no status on BA! I was in First and apparently no one got upgraded to First!

They also reserved two seats in business (with the new beds) in the last row of the front business cabin for cockpit crew to rest. I wonder if that was more comfortable than the regular rest area?

from what i understand,
this is how it usually works.
say u (the airline) have 300 Y seats, 60 J seats and 15 F seats.
approaching the date of flight and you have 300 Y fully sold and some 30 on Waitlist, but only sold 25 J, and 5 F.
and you judge u could at best sell another 5-10 J due to stand-by/etc....u would then sell another 25 Y.
..in reality they have statistic ratios of the probabilily for each sub-class for prediction of %turn-out. while ba was using 1 standard deviation (eg) to oversell Y, cx might use 0.5 standard deviation (hence much less likely to oversell)

those 325 ppl might not all show up, if eventually 315 showed up in the airport, u upgrade 15, and these 15 are picked according to tier status if you informaiton is good (like CX's)...and the last to check-in if your computer program is not as sophisticated....so if one has low/no status, it helps to check-in late http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

--this could also help us understand why upgrade into F is less often, apart from the fact that no one dare to stretch the overselling as there is no space availaible ebyond F (i.e. u cant move a F passenger somewhere else)

the crew has a few beds at the "mezzanie in the end of the cabin, i suppose it is because it is eithr too far away from the front cabin that some staff prefer to rest in teh J seats, or they wd like some extra "beds" in the longhaul svc

bagold,
was this on a BA or CX flight. Based on the posting I would think it was CX, but based on your comments it would seem like BA. I flew BA from LHR-HKG in December, and there were a large number of upgrades from coach to Club. This was done due to the use of the new Club world planes which have less economy seats. However, many people had already booked their economy travel way in advance, so instead of refusing them boarding they upgraded a large number to Club. I was in First, which was unaffected.

oops... sorry this was on a BA flight. Posted in the wrong forum again!

Just posted it in the BA forum: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum15/HTML/000745.html


[This message has been edited by bagold (edited 01-10-2001).]

So when I get a itinerary and I do not have a seat assignments and instead it says WAITLISTED that means the flight is overbooked in that cabin? Thanks.

y, when it is waitlisted, that means the quota in your subclass is filled (not necessarily the flight though), and since there is usually no show and cancelation, WL in Y subclass does not mean the flight will actually be full...but it will be thefirst indicator

...but waitlist do not entitle you to board the flight, the airline might allow you to board if they could upgrade someone with confirmed booking, but it is almost guaranteed that WL do not get upgrade

[This message has been edited by pegasus8228 (edited 01-10-2001).]