Unsold Overseas Bus Class Seats
 

We are booked on an EWR-BOM itinerary on 2/28 and notice that there are a lot of unsold Bus Class seats. I checked this flight for Reward Upgrades two months ago at time of booking and it said none were available.

Attempting to shadow book the entire itinerary today it still says no Reward Upgrades available for the Mumbai flights, though if I shadow book for Reward travel on the Mumbai flights only, even today there are Reward seats available (at a walloping 300K).

And, I notice there is already an "Upgrade Standby List" at the pda. I guess these must be Platinums or systemwide upgrades or something.

My question is, is there any point to calling to ask about a reward upgrade tomorrow given these parameters? I have deeply discounted economy seats (S and W).

Anyway, what do they do with empty Bus Class seats on these long hauls? Store extra blankets?

If you are looking at the seat map to determine availability, that is meaningless. Just means that there are seats available to be assigned, perhaps to people who have already been ticketed.

If there are indeed J seats unsold, that means that there may be UG's available, but only if those seats remain unsold.

Yes, CO, like other carriers, does not fill its premium cabin with freebies on intl. flights just to fill the seats. Who in their right mind would pay intl. premium fares if they didn't have to?

If you wanted the reward upgrade you should have wait-listed for it in advance. Now that you're inside 24 hours you cannot wait-list which means you won't get it. Sorry.

Have seen plenty of seats go unsold/unfilled in recent times and for this I say thank you - the only way to create a premium product is to treat it like a premium product, and if we started seeing UDU (UIU?) or cut-rate upgrades on int'l routes that product would go to crap, too.

At $500 + 20 - 30K miles upgrades don't come cheep so it makes sense that there would be empty seats.

CO48 will go out full today. 46/50 booked, 28 checked in, and 8 on the WL already.

Why do you care what CO does with the empty biz class seats? All you have to know is you won't be in it if you didn't ante up.

Why does one care?
 

OOH! That's flame-y. I did offer to ante up at many points along the spectrum but was told no reward upgrades available despite evidence from several sources of numerous empty seats. Thanks to the advice of more welcoming members of this list, I accomplished what I needed, which is, two nice cozy pods on the flight for myself and hubby.

Don't you ever wonder about things you don't understand? Maybe it would make you a more empathic person. (It's never too late to learn to be curious). And I always learn from the knowledgeable and often quite helpful people on this list. You know who you are, thanks.