Thread: How to tell availability?

Well, from my experiences, there's a few ways you can do this.

Yes, like you said, you can call the airline and see what they will tell you about availability. However, if the flight is some time off, that will probably change between now and then. They may give you some hints as to better days of the week, or may not.

You can play around online to see what the fares are for the flight. If it is usually $200 but one day it is $500, chances are that the flight is more full... Most airlines fill the aircraft in buckets or classes (K, Y, M, F, etc varies by airline) with each having different price points.

Probably one of the best ways is to find someone on here who works at the airline, has access to their systems, and can give you an idea.

In my access to our bookings system in the office, it gives information for some other airlines, by booking class, if there are 4 or more seats left. What airline are you planning to fly on, what dates, origin/destination? I can see what I have.

9/1/05
Southwest from SDF - PHX flight 276
ATA from PHX - OGG flight 4585

Return same airlines 9/11/05

Hi, I just checked these flights through the ZED web-site and as of today, there is good availability on those flights. They do not give you the actual count but will give you a smily face for good and a frown face when the availability is poor. Perhaps some-one will be able to check for you in late August as the time nears close to your flight.

I will pray that the availability is good in September when you are traveling. Have fun in Hawaii.

Does flyzed.com ever give anything besides a straight face or a frowning face? Such as a smiley face? Curious to when and the percentage booked does it switch between faces? Like is 90% full a frown? Or is it 80%, 70%, or what? Thanks for any enlightenment.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Paular:
Hi, I just checked these flights through the ZED web-site and as of today, there is good availability on those flights. They do not give you the actual count but will give you a smily face for good and a frown face when the availability is poor. Perhaps some-one will be able to check for you in late August as the time nears close to your flight.

I will pray that the availability is good in September when you are traveling. Have fun in Hawaii.

</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Paular,
Thanks a lot!
That's a good start, I appreciate it.

As aztimm mentioned above, you can check "fare buckets" to get a general idea of how full a flight is. One place you can check this is:

<a href="http://www.flyaow.com/classcwt.htm" target="_blank">http://www.flyaow.com/classcwt.htm</A>

When you pull up a flight, if you see all 9s or all 7s for all or most of the buckets, that means the flight is wide open. 9 is usually the highest, but some airlines only go up to 7.

If you see zeros for all or most of the buckets, that means the flight is sold out or overbooked.

You'll see many buckets, but the most important ones are F, C, and Y, which stands for First, Business, and Coach class respectively.

The other buckets you see will vary from airline to airline. Those other buckets are used to indicate discount or award seat availability, so the lower those numbers are, the fuller the flight is.

It is important to understand that these numbers indicate how many tickets are for sale, not how many seats there actually are on the plane. The airlines often oversell seats (usually coach, but sometimes business and first class), especially on the bigger planes, so if you see numbers like Y7 and lots of zeros in the other buckets, that might mean the flight is already full.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">The other buckets you see will vary from airline to airline. Those other buckets are used to indicate discount or award seat availability, so the lower those numbers are, the fuller the flight is.

It is important to understand that these numbers indicate how many tickets are for sale, not how many seats there actually are on the plane. The airlines often oversell seats (usually coach, but sometimes business and first class), especially on the bigger planes, so if you see numbers like Y7 and lots of zeros in the other buckets, that might mean the flight is already full. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>


So for my flight, if it says:
Cabin class: Y7 H7 L7 M7 B7 K7 Q7 N7
That's a good thing?

DrummerDave:

Congratulations! All those 7s means your flight is currently wide open and looking good. For now

Migflanker:

Sorry yours doesn't look as good. Y4 means there are only 4 coach seats left for sale. But it looks like your flight is on a small plane, which means it's not likely that the plane is being overbooked. So maybe there are actually four seats left. With 16 days left to the flight, I'd be somewhat worried that it will fill up.

If this flight is actually on a big plane, then I would say that coach on this flight may already be full.

The H4 W4 B4 might be more expensive coach tickets that they are willing to sell, and the Q0 L0 K0 V0 M0 are probably cheaper fare classes or awards that they don't want to sell because the flight is filling up.