Originally Posted by
Chris2303
QF do it quite often in bad weather situations that may possibly result in cancellations or severe delays.
It's called "flow forward".
They also do it and it is part of the planning for, oversales. They know later flights will be heavier (e.g. approaching 5/6pm on Friday) so they oversell those flights and when the punters turn up they offer them the next flight instead so by the time they get to the 5/6 period, just about all the oversales are cleared and the previous 5-6 flights went out full.
Yes, it is called flow forward. I also mentioned that term on an earlier post.
Ansett did exactly the same thing but they called the pax 'jumpers' because they 'jumped' to an earlier flight.