I am scheduled to fly from Ontario, CA (ONT)-SFO-ORD-PHL later today and am hoping that I will get the opportunity to give up my seat on one of the flights. Unfortunately, it looks like my best shot is ONT-SFO even though a call to United Reservations revealed that the flight is actually booked even and NOT oversold.
First, take a look at afternoon/evening flights out of Southern California today on United:
Looks promising. My flight is #6 on the list above:
My connection to ORD has 9+ seats avaialble in both F and Y so I doubt I will get a VDB chance on this flight:
The other redeyes to ORD (three planes, including a 777, leaving in the 2300 hour for ORD!) are not zeroed out either:
My final flight to PHL is F2, Y2, but in my experience, there is always quite a few no-shows for 0600 flights.
It will be interesting to see what happens now. Although I am not expecting a bump today, it wouldn't surprise me if I get up to SFO fine but have a VDB opportunity there, despite the F9/Y9 availability right now, especially with the chance of snow in the forecast for tomorrow in good ol' Chicagoland.
I'll let you know what happened tomorrow.
Comments
I've given up trying to predict bumps. They never happen when I expect them. I've found that once in a while agents aren't all that honest when it comes to how full a flight is booked. While they don't typically oversell by a whole lot over the holidays, I doubt it's sold even if it's zeroed out. As far as the other flights go, I'm kind of surprised the flights aren't fuller, but then again, you never know...
Good luck and let us know!
See you (possibly!) on 652, tonight. My 6am ORD - LGA flight has full zeroes, as well, but I don't know how much I trust inventory management or people to show up for a 6am flight. We'll see. Might get interesting.
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