mispoken

Time and time again, we go to sleep the night before non-revving somewhere to wake up and see that somehow, overnight, 20 seats were sold to Paris on a holiday weekend. It doesn't make sense, but who knows? Cancellation.....reroutes.....last minute senior citizen travel group? Who knows. But, time and time again, I make decisions based on this and decide a double commute to a hub to make the trip isn't worth it as the odds aren't in my favor. Then, I check a couple hours later and miraculously all the seats that went away overnight are back. Why does this happen? Does anyone know if Delta routinely blocks off seats for some reason that is reflected in the seats available?


(BTW note a gripe, free travel is great, I'm just curious)

Baradium

I don't know if they still do, but I understand they used to block off some seats that were available on cheap ticket places as you got closer to departure time to prevent double selling seats both internally and externally. My understanding was also that they don't do that anymore though since computers are much faster at talking to each other.

It's very possible you're seeing people moved to the flight due to itinerary reroutes but then also the result of other people being moved off because of the same. Anymore when I've asked the agents about getting a seat on flights that had shown full such as that it's turned out that was the case. It'd really filled up but then day off there were also X people who were either misconnecting, didn't show up on the first segment that they were connecting in on, or were routed some other way because of likely or actual misconnect.

4fans

I suspect that sometimes when there are irops somewhere in he system, they block a seat on your flight for misconnecting pax. However, sometimes those pax don’t make it in time to get on your flight or their flight cancels or they decide not to travel.

badflaps

The DTW/ORD mostly shows full at certain times of the day. Agent says, "Don't worry Asia is always late."

Hank Kingsley

They sold travel as a benefit when you got hired. I got travel and a retirement. Oh well.

easternguy

1) Flight shows 30 empty seats
2) Flight fills up the night before, now oversold by 5
3) Flight goes out with 40 empty seats

sailingfun

When a flight cancels all the passengers are auto rebooked almost instantly. This includes Delta passengers on Air France who cancels early and often. This often fills up a Delta flight. The auto rebooked passengers often then call Delta and change that rebooking because they don’t like the new routing. This can cause a flight to show a big loss of availability however it comes back as passengers select other options.

mispoken

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I think when a dozen seats get “booked” overnight the day before, I’ll take that with a grain of salt, assuming there aren’t any crazy IROPs or Cancellations going in. Thanks!

waldo135

Trying to leave Prague 3 years ago. Went to bed with 8 seats open in First, several in back. Woke up, and they were all sold. Went to airport anyway...they were all sold. YMMV

Schwanker

Story went downhill after this part