Held Seats
 

Non-reving is impossible these days. Can someone please explain held seats. Does held mean “good chance you get on as a non-rev” or “not a chance go back home”? I know some are held back for crew rest and weight restrictions, but what “typically” happens to those held seats near push time. Thanks

Depends on the station and the reason for holding the seats. Some stations hold a few seats to try and get non revs on, but that's not the only reason for holding.

More than likely coach is overbooked and they hold the same amount of FC seats to move pax up to accommodate the coach overbooking. An agent in London told me they do that so if Delta or AA cancel a flight they can’t take those FC seats for their passengers because they show as available.

It sounds like if there are held seats then there is a decent chance you can get on as a non-rev if the flight is showing oversold by a few. Does that sounds right?

They usually only hold, seat for seat, what is overbooked. Sort of a crap shoot.

Sometimes, when performance is critical, dispatch will use very conservative numbers, and then the SOC holds seats so that people don’t have to get taken off. Often, the captain can coordinate with dispatch to use more up-to-date Airport conditions and get a higher takeoff weight.

If you're trying to non-rev SFO-SIN, don't plan on the held seats being available to non-revs. In fact, sometimes the weight restriction is bad enough where even more than the held seats are not available to non-revs.

But it really depends on the station and the route.

As others have said, it depends.

Was flying out of SNA and they "held" a massive number of seats to make sure the plane wasn't overweight. Ended up not needing any of them, so every non-rev that came got a seat and plenty of empty ones! I was going to jumpseat, so I "knew" I would be ok. Kind of sucks, as I am sure there were many who didn't bother trying because the flight looked so bad!

On the 757 we have a silly floor weight limit issue that is affected by the new winter weight for passengers that came into effect a couple years ago. So, in the winter we have seats that are blocked so we don't exceed the structural limit on the floor (not the aircraft GW limit). For that reason you will see seats "held" in coach on employeeres on the 752s and 753s thorughout the winter. Those seats will not come open for flights, so don't count on that!!! When we switch back to summer weights for PAX they will become available again.

Seats are also held for rest seats for both Pilots and FAs, so you may see that on intl flights.

Other than that, it seems to mostly be when coach is overbooked , so they hold seats in first and then when the upgrades happen, those held seats are freed up again if the numbers left in coach drop below capacity.

There are several reasons why seats might be held.

If the flight may be weight restricted, held seats will prevent the flight from being booked full. Those seats may, or may not, be released to non-revs depending on the actual weight restriction at the time of departure.

Seats are often held when weather disruptions are imminent or in progress. This prevents new passenger bookings which would increase the number of passengers who'll have to be reaccommodated. It also leaves room on flights that do operate to reaccommodate displaced passengers from other flight.

When a down-gauge is probable, seats can be held to prevent bookings over the capacity of the smaller airplane.

When economy is oversold, some FC seats are held, in the amount of the E overbooking, so that the flight doesn't become overbook.