Like Donna, everyone in our office here is happy to give either a very close approximation of numbers on a flight, amount of listed staff or even the exact loadings.
Not that I am much help to you all the way down here, but it does happen more frequently than you may think.

Can give you one hot tip at the moment - don't try AC YVR-HNL till at least January next year! Spent the last 4 days trying to get out of YVR back to SYD and thanks to some staff "reward" pass being given to all AC Canada staff with an expiry of Dec 31, HNL is *very* popular. Had over 100 nonrevs listed each of the last 4 days !!