Quote:
Originally Posted by Silent Bob
These poor souls shouldn't be on stand by for any flight, if they were on Delta's oversell. Shouldn't they have been given confirmed seats on the next flight? (meaning they would have to oversell the following flight to put them on) It's how United and continental do it.
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Each airline (and each flight on that airline) has it's own authorization limit for oversell which is set by their revenue management department. If the next several flights are already overbooked by that limit, they will only confirm on the next flight that is below that limit but put you on stand-by for the next flight regardless of it's oversale status. As this was a party of 5 (not a reference to the old Fox series) they could only have been booked on the next flight which was 5 or more below it's max. authorization. Sometimes in this situation they will ask if the family wants to split up sending some on an earlier flight and some later.
I'm not sure how United does it but I'm very familiar with Continental (although since CO is switching to Star Alliance later this year I have a feeling I'm going to get to know the "ins-and-outs" on UA) and as they roll the stand-by list those who have been on stan-by the longest towards the top of the list after their OnePass Elite passengers.