I’ve flown a fair amount of revenue First on Swiss this year, but not faced this before: although Swiss is still selling one more seat, the seatmap is completely crossed out as ”reserved”. I’d suspect the cabin is then actually full and I would get a seat if someone else changes or cancels?

I know this is regular practice in Economy and Business, but for some reason I had not expected the same in First (naive?). What if we all show up to the flight then, they will downgrade one of us to Business? Any experience in the forum with overbooked Swiss First cabins?

Had never used Expertflyer before, but checked it out now: says 2G blocked, four seats taken and three seats available... The Swiss app and website say no seats are free for selection and only one more ticket for sale (selecting 2 travelers puts ticket availability to zero).

Weird.

It’s for LX177 SIN-ZRH on 3 December, btw.

I sat in 2K last week, 2G was then empty. Going back I was in Business, received an F upgrade refund and was told one seat in F was broken. Didn’t think of comparing the aircraft sign between the two flights, though.

Sorry I was unclear, my return was booked in Business, I had upgraded it to First with miles but got them back (and traveled in my original Business seat) as the F class seat was reported broken. I was informed about this when picking up the boarding pass in SIN - better than realizing it in-flight, especially as I couldn’t spot any unassigned Business class seat once onboard.

I think that’s an involuntary downgrade, you had paid for your F seat with miles, if the seat assigned to you was broken it’s LX problem. Did you check if your original F seat was occupied ?

Only if the upgrade was confirmed before. My last upgrade requests with LX they had withdrawn vouchers or miles from my account but the flight did not confirm in F, until checkin - or not at all & the vouchers/miles were redeposited.

Flights went out 8/8 in F, there is a lot of demand for F in Switzerland obviously.

Indeed, I was assuming the OP was confirmed in F , since OP stated informed of the seat issue at check in desk in SIN.

Not been on a LX flight for quite a while that did not end up full in F.

Swiss does furthermore have the weird rule that only 80% of seats can be assigned before check in, hence 20% must remain free. In F that means only 6 out of 8 seats can be assigned online, for the rest one must call.

To close my own thread... I called Swiss:

- One more ticket is available for sale
- No seat is free for selection in the ”public” system
- 2G is always blocked for SEN/HON and this is the seat that I will get if I book. It is the only seat available on the flight I am looking at. Similarly, on another date 2D is shown as the only free seat in the public view, but 2G is then actually also available.

When logged in as SEN, 2G is not shown to me as available for selection, so perhaps the call center agent should have said that it is HON block rather than SEN/HON block. I wonder if an HON would actually see the seat as open for selection directly, or if one always has to call. These days most companies try to push as many interactions as possible to online channels, but apparently not Swiss.