Thanks Fiona
Don't know where he was based, seemed rude to ask.
Had sufficient accent that I did not catch his name, but seemed quite familiar with the process.
One of the thing is that when you are working with a black box, people (this was tested on Pigeons but also applies to people) develop 'stories' about how things work to try and make sense of it.
It may well be that staff have developed an idea that multiple requests fail, or that once a request is refused follow on requests will be. Because that is what they have observed. But the real reason may be that block of flights were not available.
We have our own stories that you can read in this thread about what you should do or not.
Human's hate mysteries.
These flights are a long way off, so will give it the 48 hours suggests but when I ring back will ask to test multiple possibilities. Don't want to spend weeks on the phone after all.
) I'd say my strike rate has been very very high. Around 80-90% (I've not kept track). Caveat to this, that unlike someone like Matt who usually is after 2 or 3 seats, I fly solo, and it's MUCH easier to get one seat released (for obvious reasons) - so my anecdotal experience is probably very skewed due to that simple fact. I've gotten F released on SYD-LAX multiple times (and MEL-LAX when it had F), J on MEL-DFW. You can get an idea of where I go a bit I guess (ie: never tried the much harder LHR foe example). I'd also surmise that probably half would initially have been rejected but come through via manual review. For example, my most recent requests to get to DFW had an initial request MEL-DFW for my date rejected initially, MEL-SYD-LAX(F the next day) instant approval - which I grabbed, and I also put in for MEL-SYD-DFW on my preferred date (well really the request was for SYD-DFW, the team can usually add a dom connection pretty easily). So at that initial request stage I at least had a way to get to the US - not on my preferred date, but I had a seat (and internal US could be sorted separately). The othrs went for manual review, and MEL-DFW was approved about five hours later and so the SYD-DFW wasn't needed and removed, and of course I gave back the SYD-LAX F seat. From my point of view from initial call I had *something* near my preference initially which I consider pretty good, and was happily surprised to then get my actual preference mere hours later. Again, only requesting single premium seats really helped.
