Trying to Understand Availability of BE seats
 

I'm on an M fare, HNL-NRT-BKK using miles to upgrade to BE. When I booked I used the Delta seat chart to determine which days had the most BE seats available at the lowest M fare. Got 3 good days out and 2 good days return for multiple seats on all legs. When I called to book I was told that the return legs BKK-NRT were not available on either of the 2 days, though the seat charts showed (at that time) 20 and 19 open seats (out of 32). Okay, I finally booked that leg in Coach, 29A, and was put on Standby Z, all this showed up on the confirmation email. I asked about calling and they said it would show up on my Account info if it happened, or an agent along the way would advise me if I was traveling already.
I leave Weds, no upgrade so far. I went on Delta.com and checked a One Way BKK-NRT (DL296,4/8) for the flight in question, just to see. It showed NO availability, with 16 open seats in BE. I searched for a B/F seat, it returned only Coach availability. Is there some other way to search to determine actual availability? Why would the seat map on the website be incorrect to the extent that it would show so many available seats?
Just curious, still trying to figure out Delta.
I flew this route 10's of times with NW, this is the first time I have ever not been confirmed upfront while paying a Y/B/M fare and using miles or certs.

I have paid for a subscription to Expert Flyer and can always check for upgrade availability. Others have suggested other web sites which do not have a fee, but I have not tried those. Another fee based tool is KVS, which also works well.

DL seems to be insanely tight/stingy about advance upgrades on inter-asia flights to NRT. No idea why. I'd keep calling/checking, and if you don't clear in advance make sure you request to be put on the standby list at the airport when you check in, since if there are available seats you should, theoretically, clear at the gate since you are using an SWU. The only concern is that many agents don't seem to be trained/informed about how to correctly process the airport standby upgrades, so I'm not sure what will happen in BKK. The ticket counter agent has to put you on the airport standby list, and then the gate agent has to clear you into BE if there are any seats open... and you should be cleared BEFORE any non-revs get seats in BE and not have to pay any miles or anything, assuming you are using a SWU and its already in the system... but I'd take a copy of the cert number and redemption code anyway.

They are using miles, not SWU's. Same bucket, but I wonder if the same day use of SWU's affects anyone using miles. ie are they higher or lower in priority?

Whoops, missed the part in the first sentence about using miles... guess I was reading too fast :p

Yeah I'm not sure how SWU standby use effects miles use... or for that fact can they even get go from waitlist to the airport standby list with miles?

Thanks for the reference to ExpertFlyer. I am still wondering why when I did my attempt at a One-Way, full fare Biz from BKK to NRT it only returned Coach availability when the seat map for the flight showed many empty seats.
Would EF show otherwise?

I have a printout of my Itinerary, showing 5 legs. The 3 legs I am confirmed BE as a Z with seats assigned but the BKK-NRT leg has two entries, one in Coach with seat assigned and one in BE with "Waitlist". The Delta agent told me as long as there is an empty seat in Biz I will get it. I wonder if he could see if there was anyone ahead of me on that list?

It's called married segment availability. In your case, DL wants to sell a J fare BKK-NRT-someplace in the USA as a very expensive ticket, rather than use all of the Business inventory on the BKK-NRT leg. The dynamic mix applied by Revenue Management between full fare J and discounted business for all of the potential destinations beyond Narita can't be understood without all the data - and much of the data aren't public.

Thanks 3Cforme, that would make sense. Todays travel day and I
just checked in @ HNL SkyClub. When asked about a possible confirmation of upgrade from waitlist the attendent (ex-NWA and familiar with me) advised that "oh 296 BKK/NRT, BE seats are all sold but unassigned, that's why seat map shows emptly, never trust seatmap on website". (She then gave the aside, "NW had much better website, but we will get better")

Does this make sense? One would think that if a seat was sold that some formula would drop availablity and randonmly block a seat, even if the Confirmation booking for the customer showed an unassigned seat.
Any experience with this?
This could also explain why I couldn't book this single leg in BE when I attempted to check the system availablity.

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DL's stinginess on releasing seats for PMU's/SWU's is quite bad. One time BE was over half open the entire week up to the flight and I couldn't use it as the old 48 rule was in effect.

I'd still check during your trip regarding the return BKK-NRT segment... the system may be showing J0 which made the agent think its all sold, but my guess is that it really isn't all sold out. I saw this occuring regularly with my ICN-NRT leg... J inventory kept going all over place from J0 to J6, and then I finally cleared 1 day before the flight and they upgraded 2 more people at the gate because there were open seats.

And yes inventory looks very screwy when you only look at the one segment... the married seg logic as 3Cforme mentioned really confuses things when trying to figure out inventory. For example using EF, if I put in just BKK-NRT on 4/8 I get J0Y2, but if I put in BKK-HNL through NRT, I see J6I2Y5, which sounds pretty good for the upgrade clearing, and I strongly suspect there are way more than 6 J seats available as well.

Mahalo Rylan,

So, ExpertFlyer gives conflicting results for different scenarios.
Still, encouraging for me, as you say.

Spoke to a 20 year plus FA on my HNL-NRT segment, boy are there some
unresolved issues between NW staff and DL management! The "news" though is that DL intends to replace all TransPac and IntraAsia metal with 767's and 757's exclusively. All 747's to be reallocated. This FA was on the trial 757 HNL-Osaka, and was not impressed with it's viability as a replacement to 747's. This is the "intent", according to this FA but "this airline, unlike NW, doesn't think things out, they state intent and train us and then change their mind". I expressed dismay at both quality (757!!!) and availability of seats with a 757, asked if they intended to increase flights or lose capacity, answer was a shrug of the shoulders.
We shall see.
Anyway, my first post merger run to BKK, everything was smooth and up to standard.

Did you even stop to think this through and respond to the FA?

You could use 767s and 757s intra-Asia, certainly, but you can't fly from ATL/JFK/DTW/MSP to Asia on a 767, and you can't fly to Asia from anywhere in the CONUS on a 757, so the FA was flat wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Fanning the flames of doom and despair, was he/she.

I suspect what this FA was reacting to was the operation of PDX-NRT and SFO-NRT using the 767. That's hardly a wholesale replacement of the current fleet to Tokyo.

At the very least, have a healthy dose of skepticism with what you hear from FAs.

Robert,
Ah, the difficulties imposed by the form of communication.
I put the word news in quote marks ( "news" ) , which were used
to distinguish it from the plain or common use of the word. I hoped that this would lead to the reader interpreting the information that followed rather than taking it at face value.
"Did you even stop to think this through..."
Yes, I did. I was not immediately able to continue the conversation due
to the landing of the plane. As I typed in the Post I considered
the absurdity of one of the comments made by the FA, namely that
the 747's would be reassigned to the longest legs in Deltas network.
What's longer than NRT to anywhere other than West Coast? I might have
included that nugget but the point of that portion of the post was something that is no news to anybody, unresolved issues with the NW/DL merge. I obviously didn't think it warranted a new thread, it was an aside. In retrospect I think the reason I wrote as much as I did is that I am concerned about any expanded use of 757's. I don't like that plane. Do you believe the FA when they said that the 757 has been tested HNL/Osaka? Just curious.
I note that you are an Original Member, I'm sure you've read a lot
of silliness, misinformation, and pointless commentary. I'm relatively new
to contributing to this Forum, I've lurked for a while, now I'm trying to contribute. I'll try harder.
Aloha

Recall that just as seat maps are not an infallible indication of load, neither are the availability listings such as J4 and J0. The number there only indicates the number of tickets which can be sold at that fare level. It usually tracks the number of unsold seats but not always. (Best example is an oversell condition in coach where all seats have been sold but the airline could still show Y9 B9...)