BenA

Looking at the seat map for a flight next week, I saw a new one - an error message telling me the seat map can't be viewed:

I knew that the flight had already been packed when I booked my ticket back in December, so this got me looking at the availability data, and things look pretty grim out of Seattle for Thursday and Friday of next week. Pretty much everything is nearly full - from SEA to ATL, MSP, or DTW, the lowest fare class available for booking on all but a few mid-afternoon flights is already Y or B, and the seat maps confirm it's not just a revenue management trick.

Some of these flights are being operated by airplanes much smaller than I'm used to - 738 on the SEA-ATL redeye, for example - and given how popular these flights are (and have been for weeks), I wonder if bookings are stronger than expected and if they're missing out on sales as a result...

Anyone else seeing surprisingly full flights in their home cities for days you'd normally consider "low season"? I wasn't even seeing this level of bookings in the height of the holiday travel season...

MSPeconomist

1. Even if the seat map is full, you should still be able to see it.

2. Another unpublished DM benefit seems to be that if you purchase a ticket on a flight for which a seat cannot be assigned, some wonderful underutilized DM agent working a night shift will notice and open a very nice seat for you that otherwise was blocked for airport assignment. It's magic. You might also try calling to ask that a seat be opened for you; I did this all the time with NW and they were happy to fulfill my request.

BobH

I'm not sure there's anything that *new* here

NW used to lock seat selection after a certain percentage of seats on a flight had been booked.

Bob H

GYEWorldTraveler

They have done this for me (a PM) too. I was automatically assigned a middle seat since it was the only seat on the plane when I purchased my ticket and then magically I checked a day later and I was moved into the bulkhead aisle seat without doing anything. Unfortunately, it didn't end up making a difference because I was UGed at the gate. But I think it is nice that when PMs and DMs buy last minute ticket or close in tickets that DL finds a window or aisle seat for us.

BenA

Worth noting that I do have a seat assignment (actually a pretty good one) on this flight - I just was surprised that delta.com had locked me out from viewing/changing it. When I click the flight, it automatically redirects me to the second flight in my itinerary after i click OK to the error.

I'm used to seeing seat maps with no available seats, but not to getting an error about the flight being overfull...

motytrah

Well, if you want cash IDB comp you could remove your FF number, check as close as you're comfortable and linger around the gate to see what happens.

BenA

This is pretty cool. I knew you could get this done by calling the DM line or talking to a Sky Club agent, but it's awesome they do it proactively.

MSPeconomist

I didn't say it was new; I remember it going back probably fifteen years with NW.

DiverDave

The "new" thing here in the past month or so is that when there are no seats available for selection, you get the message the OP saw.

I got it for some flights on December 16th, and have been getting it on and off for a flight next Wednesday (as open seats come and go).

David

javabytes

How does this make the reductions a little too heavy? Unless they're having to deny boarding to lots of pax, or are completely zeroed out well in advance, then it sounds like they have right-sized the equipment and schedule for the route. They still have Y and B fares for sale; sounds like they've done about as good as they could hope for in terms of load.

Moebius01

I've had this happen on a few full flights as well, even if I had an assigned seat. It seems like they coded that message to appear whenever the app doesn't see any open seats to assign or switch to.

rylan

I've gotten this message over the past few days for one of my flights that ended up being oversold. I could previously see the seatmap and it looked full but they were still selling Y seats... once it hit Y0 the seat map became locked out.

As to the original point about winter capacity reductions... yes the airlines are basically shooting themselves in the foot for whenever the inevitable winter storm happens. There is no extra capacity to accomodate people and it takes days to get everyone out. Same thing occurs in case of MX... oops sorry the flights for the next 2 days are already overbooked.

atrich

Two reasons I can think of:

• Makes it very hard for them to deal with delays (weather-related or otherwise), as all the flights are full. For OP's flights, imagine a snowstorm, crew, or equipment issue crops up Thursday night, you get a real logjam since the Friday flights are booked solid.
• Airlines routinely oversell flights. Because of noshows, if they didn't do this, they would never fly a full plane (or the plane would be full of nonrevs :P). In OP's case, the seatmap is full. When someone buys a Y or B fare at this point, there are already more PAX with purchased tickets than seats.

I flew nonrev on AA for years, their employee website showed you the actual loads versus seats on the equipment so you could avoid the negative space flights. I guess they get enough noshows to oversell the craft by 10-20%, but when everybody actually makes the flight (probability goes way up if the flight gets delayed by 15+ minutes) you can end up with a lot of VDBs. I guess this is okay, presuming that the next six flights aren't also sold to the gills.

javabytes

I can't see it being practical for them to leave enough empty seats to easily and quickly reaccomodate most passengers in the event of substantial IROPS. A big weather event - like the one Christmas weekend in the northeast - might take a couple of days to recover from, but I don't see the problem with this (from the airline's point of view, not the stranded passenger). Keeping lots of excess capacity and flying with a lower load factor "just in case" doesn't make sense when airlines are still struggling with profitability.

Airlines do oversell, but they have so many data points that they are about as scientific as possible when controlling availability. A few oversold seats here and there aren't often going to be a problem even in times of relatively high loads. Even Y1 is enough to reaccommodate a passenger.

BenA

I'd agree if we were 1-2 days out. In this case, though, the flight filled up well in advance - ~10 days before the flight. Delta is out of seats to sell at lucrative HQK fares to last minute purchasers - while their competitors like UA have plenty of availability, preventing DL from going after those passengers as they're stuck with uncompetitive pricing.

For example, for a hypothetical itinerary leaving on the 13th...

SEA-ATL, on DL: $517 connecting, $643 direct
SEA-ATL, on UA/AA: $320
Difference: $197

SEA-PWM, on UA: $428 two stop, $515 one stop
SEA-PWM, on DL: $694 two stop, $974 one stop
Difference: $266

That fare difference may look good for Delta at first, but they're not going to sell those seats to anyone whose employer requires them to book the 'lowest reasonable fare'. Being out of seats constrains Delta's ability to go after these fairly pricey tickets, which seems like lost revenue to me when they could theoretically have swapped in a 757 for a 737. It also makes it more difficult to feed international flying to Europe and Latam out of east coast hubs, where connecting traffic might mean more overall revenue than a domestic passenger.

(For reference, many of UA's flights to ORD on the days I'm comparing have availability all the way down through 10 booking codes to S class, some to K. DL only has Y, B, or M to ATL)