UA SFO-AMS Half flight empty but no Business Saver
 

This is puzzling. I know UA often waits to open business saver to the last minute so I was watching this flight. It's still half empty in J class. At this point, pretty clear there is no way these seats will fill by the flight this afternoon yet not even one saver spot. Is this a glitch or something?
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...77a133678a.png
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...1fc782e837.png

Not particularly unusual. Frustrating, yes, especially for all those upgraders in E+ ready for a seat in business.

If you want J class, I suggest going to the airport and getting ready to buy it at about T-2.

Not glitchy, just revenue management.

They might have some track record of selling some last minute tickets for this route, and would be worried about cannibalizing those sales if they have award inventory available.

If I needed to fly SFO to AMS tonight, and were responsible for my own travel $s, you bet I would be checking to see if I can burn miles instead of dollars for this one.

It's a big change from say five years ago, but not at all unusual now.

Anyone who is waitlisted for an upgrade or for I space should clear into empty seats.

There are currently 17 NRSA on the business class waitlist, presumably most or all of them will wind up riding up front.

don't they make more money if they sell miles for it tho?

One downside of UA waiting until the gate to upgrade to business class, rather than in advance, is loss of use of the Polaris Lounge. Another downside is choice of seat assignment. :)

How do you know that?

Seatmaps are not a very reliable indicator.
I have seen it all. Flight with full seatmaps are empty. Flights with empty seatmap are full.

This seems to be more common now as the last two flights where I was waitlisted with a GPU for an upgrade had 12+ open seats in J and the upgrades did not clear until the agents at the gate cleared the upgrade list right before boarding began. United must be counting on more people buying the upgrades on day of departure and it also limits the number of people in the Polaris lounge.

We should be seeing these people on the waitlist shortly shouldn't we? But it's all just non-revs? This is just an indication of how much value UA places in opening up I space. I suspect this is more just redeemed miles value management than revenue management. They want people to redeem for standard awards vs saver awards and one to do that is just to not open saver awards.

I believe UA will earn more money by not making saver award space available. Why? Passengers, who want to fly Business Class and have the money, are more likely to fork out real cash to buy a J-seat, if saver awards are not available. Same logic is applied by SQ, CX, LH and co.

Sfo-AMS 1Apr
 

Yes, but airlines play the long game. For a given flight, the airline should cut the price of seats down to a minimal amount, reflecting cost of fuel, meal, and ground/air servicing for the added passenger as it gets close to flight time, because better to sell the seat for $50 (or 5000 miles) than have it go empty. But they don't, because to do so would lead potential flyers to hold out on buying tickets until the price decreases, and the airline wouldn't be able extract the maximum revenue from that one flyer who really, really needs to fly to AMS today and will pay $9000 to do it.

It does appear to be all revs because the flight standby and upgrade standby lists are identical - this is indicative of all revs but perhaps no others on the flight have a high enough fare to qualify for an upgrade?

IMO, Belongs here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...ear-round.html

-RM

I assume you mean indicative of non-revs. It is rare for a revenue passenger to appear both on the upgrade list and the standby list.

Appears two upgrades have been cleared and two revenue passengers are above the many non-revs.

Is there a difference?

:D

It appears IM is not releasing any J- u/g and awards, pending input of empirical data.
This might be the updated approach on new-launched routes.

Data point: IAD-AMS today

• J7
• JN7
• C7
• D7
• Z7
• ZN7
• P7
• PN5
• PZ5
• IN5
• I5

it does seem funky.
What would the rationale be tho for retaining award space inventory on newly launched routes vs established routes?

Maximizing and protecting revenues?

how does giving seats to non rev or non miles passangers do that. thy flight leaves in 3 hours- it's all going to non rev upgrades or empty. how are you saying that maximizes revenue exactly?

Except, I don't think it really does anything of the sort, because they're going to clear upgrades anyway, and anyone who had booked economy saver (which is wide open) could waitlist for I and expect to clear also.

The only caveat is that waitlist requests aren't allowed within 24 hours of departure, but if you wanted to take a chance on tomorrow's flight, you could (although tomorrow's flight is booked 42/48).

I think it's just an oversight on the part of revenue management.

Maybe they wait until they have historical data on how many last minute seats they sell before releasing. Seems a bit heavy handed though?

i was just going to say the same thing. perhaps their system on a new route doesnt even try to allocate business awards until they have more data no matter how much space there is. I wonder if that has implications for buying upgradable coach fares on new routes too.
it's a shame tho as I have some miles burnin in my pocket and want to to europe on a 787 or a350

Yes. Good programming would say "we have only once in 500 flights sold 10+ biz seats to AMS in the last 24 hours from any US airport, so release the other 10"
Bad programming says "so you're saying there's a chance?"

it's true. but im pretty sure that's exactly what's happening.
i wonder if they'll open up at t-2

Seems about right: United PolarisSM business: 48 Booked: 29 Checked In: 18

No, cheap programming says, "can we just add a rule that PZ=0 on this route"? Much easier than trying to load-balance.

Edit for mistake post

?? There are only 27 people booked into Polaris for today's SFO>AMS flight.

Though here it showed J9. Flight status shows 27/48 booked.

Maybe one of the non-revs on the waitlist is the programmer.

UA EmpRes only shows 6 available J seats and 7 in Y so I am not sure where you're getting your info from?

I think we're both looking at UA's public flight status info, which shows how many seats are "booked". Are there greater limits on Non-revs?

You know what, I made a mistake. I was looking at tomorrows flight. Oooof.
Todays flight has 21J/12Y available.

Dohhh

Nothing changed at T-2 wrt to I space still I0

Flight status now shows 29 booked, 38 checked in, 10 seats available, and 15 assumed non-revs on the lists. WTH?

I suspect its more like if origin or destination == SFO then PZ=0; I=0.