Thread: ZED fare on UNITED AIRLINES

Are you f*cking kidding me? You want us to block a revenue passenger from being able to book (which is how the airline actually makes money, from actual customers) so that a hitchhiker from another airline can get on instead? People get fired from their jobs for that kind of thing!

I had load numbers here, but I changed my mind. This just pisses me off.

Originally Posted by 1jz

Dear all, I am planning to fly from Los Angeles to Minneapolis - minnesota on 15 of the month. The aircraft that flies from there is a small one and it seems to be kinda all booked. And there are not a lot of flights.. Just two per day. So, is it that there is a possibility of Dummy booking by the agents and as soon as the time is near, the dummy booking is removed? Any other idea or advise is appreciated.

What you are requesting is disingenuous and absurd. Go buy a ticket..

Please understand that you would be asking someone to risk their job and for you to risk your flight benefits if your employer found out that you deliberately did such a thing. I don't know of a single person who would even consider such a thing.

DL has policy of same day standby, so rev pax come and go frequently. I think it's very cheap to use it--maybe $50. Business people will do that often since companies pay for it. Maybe OALs have similar system.
Also, nonrevs have a bad habit of listing on multiple flights and not cancelling when they get something better. Misconnects might drop off, too, if no chance to get them there and they get rescheduled.

Misconnects and no shows might explain why. Dummy bookings by employees can get them fired as already mentioned. People on flexible refundable tickets may change plans at the last minute.

Ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt there. The odds of it being dummy bookings is extremely low. I'm a software developer, and we have 3 test systems I can think of off the top of my head. Anyone who would need to make dummy bookings would probably do it under a test system, or if they must test in production, they'll use a flight far off and cancel it ASAP. As you can tell by our reactions, inventory is a precious thing to keep on top of. So the odds of a dummy booking opening seats at the last minute is very low, especially for the flight you happen to be on. But a misconnect, especially when flying from a hub (such as LAX)? Certainly possible. Or a business traveler whose meeting went late. Or someone stuck in traffic. You get the idea. Point is, it's certainly possible that seats will open up last-minute, but not something to be counted on.

Right now the UA flights have 4 seats, 2 nonrevs, followed by 10 seats, no nonrevs. Which is roughly what I saw a couple days ago and eventually edited out.

If you are talking about same day type of flight load changes, then it is all down the the airline's Same Day Confirmed (also called alternate flight same day) policy. It can be very inexpensive to make same day changes so flight loads, which used to be fairly stable the day before travel are now all over the map as people adjust their flights for anywhere from $25-75. Most airlines allow you to either call, go online or simply show up at the airport and change to an alternate flight for that price range which means nonrevving becomes infinitely more fun - we have no idea what the flight loads will actually end up being until we show up!

An example: I was coming home from California yesterday and the original flight I was going for looked bad so I checked out an alternate airport. Loads of seats about 8 hours before so I modified my plans. On the way to the airport I checked again and my "loads of seats" became 0 seats with 42 - yes 42 - people listed. I ended up doing something I have never had to do when flying nonrev - I bought a ticket on the way to the airport (thank goodness for mobile apps). In the end 5 or so of those 42 people got on and I definitely wouldn't have been one of them.