Thread: Positive Space

You've fairly well guessed it. You have a confirmed seat that is pulled from inventory. However, in most cases, if the flight is oversold you're the first to go - with NO denied boarding compensation.

Well, it does put you at the top of the standby list.

In general the difference between positive space and subload travel is that a seat has been taken from the commercial inventory to allow for the positive space ticket which means one less seat to sell to a commercial passenger. As with any commercial ticket this space is subject to the impact of overbooking. In normal circumstances all non-revenue tickets ( pos or sby space ) are given an onload priority which dictates whereabouts in the pecking order they sit, the positive space priorities tend to be higher up the pecking order than the subload ones.
Some of these priorities have a 'ranking' higher than a commercial booked passenger ( positioning Crew and engineers for example ), some have a ranking higher than commercial passenger holding open tickets ( i.e. not booked on that specific flight ) and some ( the majority ) are below all commercial bookings.
Based upon this it is quite possible that if you have a positive space booking you may not be accepted for a flight if it is full however it might also be the situation that you are accepted and a commercial passenger is not accepted , depending upon specific policies of the carrying airline.
If you want to ensure that you get on the flight become a CAA Inspector ( FAA in the US ) as I believe that these are the only people, when on duty, that cannot be refused acceptance.