Dyce

My anecdotal evidence says they're NOT selling all the J seats... 767-300 so 30 total J seats...16 open seats on my Thursday night flight, and 13 on the upgrade list. So assuming a couple of upgrades already, more than half are upgrades... Virtually all my recent flights there have been (based on seat selection availability) greater than 10 open seats 48 hours(ish) before departure... that all get filled. It's certainly not a glut of last minute full fare purchases.

The only routing I have upcoming that isn't is SFO-SIN

jsloan

It’s very route-specific. However, I promise you that in most cases, they are selling the seats. Just walk around a hub airport and glance at the upgrade lists.

The seat map is meaningless.

Dyce

Was talking international versus domestic. Disagree on seat map being meaningless for indicating how many seats sold up front. Agree, it's meaningless for the back, but up front it's a decent barometer....

jsloan

UA is selling the seats internationally, too, often to people taking a buy-up at check-in. UA is optimizing for short-term revenue, under the assumption that people will continue to fly them due to their schedule even if their upgrades rarely clear.

You’re underestimating the number of people who don’t select a seat.

Regardless, if your plan is to buy PE and upgrade, then those seats may be available to you. If your plan is to buy Y and upgrade, well… good luck.

Dyce

Think we'll have to agree to disagree. I think the majority of ppl booking up front select a seat... it's only in the back when certain fare types don't allow pre-selection that the map gets a little meaningless.
Especially with this new fangled interweb thing that allows you to select your seat from your phone...

HNLbasedFlyer

I'm curious why you think a lot of people don't select a seat, especially up front? Does some sort of research suggest this? Upgrades auto-assign you a seat. All the major booking sites either force you into a booking path to select seats or make it very easy to select a seat - I'm having a hard time believing people are buying F and deliberately and actually going out of their way to not choose a seat.

chavala

Add me to the list of those curious why you think this?

rankourabu

OPM flyers who have their tickets booked for them may never bother to select their seats.

Dyce

As HNLBasedFlyer states above, the system typically makes a selection.

For myself, when booking corporate tickets through AMEX travel, I'm always assigned a seat. I tell them to book whatever, and then go online to make my own selections - saves discussion on what my options are...
When booking online I am auto assigned a seat, again, using AmEx travel which is one of, if not the biggest, corporate travel sites.

jsloan

Years of comparing load factors / inventory data to seat maps. They don't match.

Sometimes they don't match because seats are being blocked. Sometimes they don't match because people don't have an assigned seat. Sometimes they don't match and I can't figure out why (e.g,, more seats are assigned than inventory data suggests are sold). But if you're trying to judge your upgrade chances, you want inventory data, not the seat map.

Repooc17

There can be a lot of reasons for un-assigned seats.

For example, I used to buy tickets from TAs, and most of them would never assign seats by default.

fumje

Yes. Roughly speaking, it varies by route, but I have seen it as low as 50% of booked tickets with seats selected. There are many reasons. Although it is the default, sometimes even UA's own site doesn't assign seats.

HNLbasedFlyer

In First Class? TA's still? Didn't think many were around still - and didn't grab a seat once ticketed in First after the fact?

WineCountryUA

Recent observations support "meaningless seatmaps" or at least new behavior , been tracking a number of TATL routes and have regularly seen 10 open seats but J3 (just random numbers), but the available seats for sell well below the open seats. Watch the upgrade lists in the last week and only a few actual upgraders (and not blocked for PremPlus oversells.

It may be the "new" premium cabin passengers have introduced a new behavior? Get a Polaris upgrade waitlist snap shot of your flight a week out and empty seats and compare to departure.

Recent FRA-SFO flight -- late Sept, 773, 1st column is front polaris section open seats, 2nd is back section Polaris open seat and 3rd is PP open seat, 4th is inventory. In the last week the upgrade list did not change till the gate and 2 cleared in Polaris (2 no shows?) ... each line is a day -- 3 week span. Every other day initial then switched to daily


Why this happening I don't know and is contrary to what I had expected but repeated on 3 SFO-FRA/MUC/ZRH flights that did the same pattern plus two additional ZUR/MUC-SFO -- total of 6 flights in a 4 week span.

Inventory decrease and seatmap count unchanged and in one case increases

Any explanations?

lhrsfo

This thread is about international and there are few international routes where UA even offers First Class.

More generally, there will be a much higher percentage of overseas buyers using UA on its international routes than on its domestic routes. Seat allocation is very often not free in international markets, so it wouldn't be a normal part of the booking process for many. So, all other things being equal, you should expect to see a greater %age of seats not being allocated in international markets.