Originally Posted by
MartinC08
Is it pretty reliable to use the international flight benefits on the UA side?....if there's 20+ seats being shown as open on a flight that's in 24 hrs, do you have a good chance of getting on?
I don't know what it is with United, but I swear they have a magic program that looks at the amount of open seats the morning of a flight and automatically books random people (probably against their will) on the flight until the flight shows 10 oversold. Have had this happen on virtually every United mainline flight I try to get on. If I wasn't able to ride the jumpseat domestically I'd never actually get on.
As for international, we tried to go SFO-HKG. Seven hours before departure they were showing 70 open seats. Got to the airport and it was 11 oversold. Tried Honolulu with the same result. I've seen the same thing many, many times.
Not sure why, but Delta mainline seems much better in this respect...