BE availability puzzle
 

With EF now blind, I'm trying to figure out true availability / upgrade probability on my ATL-AMS flight today. Upgrade list says two seats available, seat map shows two available, but if I do a dummy booking I see 'three seats available at this price'.

So where's the third seat? Secret reserve capacity? Held by a non-rev who will move to the back if the sell the seat? Does it mean they'll bump somebody if a walk-up is willing to pay full freight?

Most probably an award BE seat holder who they think they can bump either to EC or to another flight. Of course with appropriate compensation!

Normal inventory management overselling. DL thinks at least one BE seat holder will not show up for the flight. "One" is actually a pretty low overselling number. I have seen at lot higher. Once again, it is a bad idea to judge availability using seat map.

Could be this - and I saw a recent thread about this . . .

I was just looking at seat maps for PIT/CDG for next August, and I see that 1A & 1B always appear taken, even 11 months in advance, which, of course, isn't possible. I believe they block 2 seats off for pilot rest, but only 1 pilot will rest at a time. There's some kind of rule, that, if there's even a single unsold BE seat, it HAS TO BE the one next to the Pilot rest seat. I think it was said to be in the pilots' contract - maybe?

So, they WILL sell it - and assign it, but if any one seat in BE isn't sold, it has to be THAT one. (I read here somewhere).

Here it is:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...xperience.html

Check post #7 in particular.