stupid airline question

[Luanne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Luanne]

If I'm making an airline reservation and I'm allowed to make the reservation, but not reserve a seat (the airline website is showing no seats available) what exactly does this mean? Is the flight already oversold?

The flight is not until May 29th.

[Glitter Brunello Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Glitter Brunello]

The system only allows a certain number of seats to be assigned in advance. After that, you can still reserve, and are still getting a "confirmed" seat, but it won't be assigned until you get to the gate.

You can still print your boarding passes in advance, they will read "Seat Request" or something along those lines. Then you go to the gate to get your assigned seat. If the flight is oversold, they will still ask for volunteers to get you a seat. I have noticed that people with the "seat requests" don't always get seats together, though, unless they are traveling with young children.

Worst case scenario (and we saw this happen over Easter week on USAirways b/c USAirways sucks and d/n offer enough incentives to volunteers) is that they don't get enough volunteers, and people without seat requests get bumped, involuntarily. But they do get the same compensation as offered to volunteers.

[Luanne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Luanne]

Thanks. This is for dd flying by herself, so the sitting together isn't an issue. It would be more of a problem if she didn't get on the plane, since there will be folks at the other end waiting to pick her up. Hmmmm, wonder if we should just go ahead and try to find a flight that will allow her to get a confirmed seat.

[Spence Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Spence]

For example, a plane has 100 seats, the airline will allow seat assignment for the first 70, after that they will sell 40 more seats without assigning #s. They have forcasting algorithms that tell them how many seats to sell. At Easter I was on United, they were oversold by 8 when I arrived at the gate but they didn't need to bump anyone from the plane... My party of 3 got bumped to First Class though.

[Luanne Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Luanne]

I probably should have added, and don't know if this makes any difference.....this is a 4-legged flight. Two going and two coming home. It was only the first leg, OAK to DEN where we couldn't get seat assignment. All of the other legs were available.