Expert Flyer Help

Status
Not open for further replies.

Chucksta

Active Member
Joined
Mar 19, 2006
Posts
623
I just tried expertflyer on a QF flight to Singapore. I put in for an upgrade so I'm keen to see if it will happen.

How do you know exactly how many businesss class seats are available?

I did a query and it gave me this:

J9 C9 D9 I9 U0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 R9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O9 G0 T7 X7 E7

Do you just add up the numbers for J,C,I, and U? So does that mean 36 business class seats available? Or is it just 9 seats for all of business?

How about for economy??

thanks

Chucksta
 
Chucksta said:
I just tried expertflyer on a QF flight to Singapore. I put in for an upgrade so I'm keen to see if it will happen.

How do you know exactly how many businesss class seats are available?

I did a query and it gave me this:

J9 C9 D9 I9 U0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 R9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O9 G0 T7 X7 E7

Do you just add up the numbers for J,C,I, and U? So does that mean 36 business class seats available? Or is it just 9 seats for all of business?

How about for economy??

thanks

Chucksta
Hi,

There is a thread on this in the "Your Questions" forum. This list was provided by Dave Noble (of course ;) ):

From ExpertFlyer, Class codes for QF

A QF FIRST
AN QF FIRST CLASS
B QF ECONOMY
BN QF ECONOMY
C QF BUSINESS
CN QF BUSINESS
D QF BUSINESS
DN QF DELUXE NIGHT
E QF SHUTTLE SERVICE
F QF FIRST
FN QF DELUXE NIGHT
H QF ECONOMY
HN QF ECONOMY
I QF DISCOUNT BUSINESS
J QF BUSINESS
K QF ECONOMY
KN QF ECONOMY
L QF ECONOMY
M QF ECONOMY
N QF ECONOMY
O QF ECONOMY
P QF FIRST
Q QF ECONOMY
R QF ECONOMY
S QF STANDARD
T QF ECONOMY
U QF Business - Award
V QF ECONOMY
W QF ECONOMY
X QF Economy - Award
Y QF ECONOMY
YN QF ECONOMY
Z QF First - Award

So just add up the relevant codes.
 
There is no public view that will tell you exactly how many seats there are available

Dave
 
Optics said:
So just add up the relevant codes.

Noooooo

Each code has a number showing a minimum number QF is prepared to sell. 9 is the largest number displayed (for some classes for some airlines the maximum number displayed may be 2 or 4 or 7), but the real number can be significantly more.

If QF is happy to sell a seat at discounted fare then they are also happy to sell the same seat at any higher fare. So the one seat they are prepared to sell may appear as available in multiple booking classes. Do not add up the numbers.

Seem simple? Well there is more. Airlines can and do oversell in the expectation (based on experience for the flight, route, date and any events going on, etc) that some pax will no show. So an availability of x doesn't actually mean the cabin has x seats left. The airline may be happy overselling the cabin. In some cases the amount of oversell can be huge - I've seen flights oversold by 40 or more and no-one got bumped. Depending on the cabin you are looking at overselling factors may increase or reduce the number of seats the airline is prepared to sell.

How can it reduce you ask? Consider the case of a route that historically doesn't sell too many business (or first if you like) but can easily sell high fare economy. The airline may be happy overselling economy by a large margin, even planning on significant numbers of op-ups, knowing they wont sell too many of the higher cabin. The higher cabin may then have slightly less availability as they need to make room for op-ups.

Now back to the example on hand

J9 C9 D9 I9 U0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 R9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O9 G0 T7 X7 E7

QF is willing to sell at least 9 business class and at least 9 economy class seats. There are currently no business upgrades available. There are however plenty of discounted business paid seats (at least 9). There are also plenty of reasonably discounted economy paid (and award) seats. Inferring the fullness of the cabin is tricky as need to understand the flight route, date, time of day, etc. However in the absence of other info, it does not appear to be overly full flight.
 
Chucksta said:
... How do you know exactly how many businesss class seats are available?

I did a query and it gave me this:

J9 C9 D9 I9 U0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 R9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O9 G0 T7 X7 E7

Do you just add up the numbers for J,C,I, and U? So does that mean 36 business class seats available? Or is it just 9 seats for all of business?

How about for economy?? ...
Those numbers won't tell you exactly how many business class seats are currently available, J9 D9 I9 U0 means there are at least 9 that Qantas are prepared to sell. It's the same for economy.

OK, there are at least 9 unsold seats in business class on this flight. There is quite possibly more than 9 available but Qantas only give GDS's (like ExpertFlyer) up to 9 for queries like this.

So, seats are available, but Qantas do not expect to sell many of them at Full rates and are prepared to discount all or most of them. They are not quite yet prepared to offer any (more) for Business class award redemption.

In this case there is a good chance of business class upgrade award seats appearing.

One more bit of information is required... how soon is this flight? If it's in the next few weeks the chances are better; if in a few months time more seats are likely to be sold and the chances diminish.

If expert flyer had returned something like J9 D1 it means Qantas are only currently prepared to sell one of these at a discounted business class rate. This indicates that the Qantas "Yield Management" voodoo expect to sell most of these seats, so they charge at full business class rates.

If Qantas are only prepared to sell 1 business class seat on this flight at a discounted rate it follows that there is unlikely to be any Award redemptions available in Business and very few upgrades (if any).

If it had been J2 D0 the implication is that few seats are now available and Qantas expect to sell them at Full rates. In these cases there is little chance of upgrade seats being available.

Givent that ecomomy awards are available (T7 X7) the implication is the flight is currently lightly booked.
 
what about the seat maps in expert flyer?

would that tell you how many seats are left in business???

i'm really hoping for an upgrade, would love to try out the skybed!

i'm a QFF Gold and my wife is also a QFF Gold. hopefully that gives us a good chance to get the upgrade!
 
Counting 'empty' business class seats can assist.

More to the point, how long before you travel?.
 
Chucksta said:
what about the seat maps in expert flyer?

would that tell you how many seats are left in business???

i'm really hoping for an upgrade, would love to try out the skybed!

i'm a QFF Gold and my wife is also a QFF Gold. hopefully that gives us a good chance to get the upgrade!

Seat maps are a bad way of assessing how full or otherwise a flight may be. Better than nothing at all, but not very accurate.

Firstly, not everyone allocates a seat. There are lots of reasons why seats may be blocked - from bassinet seats, to airline keeping seats together for a group, seats may be reserved for codeshare pax, etc.
 
The Frequent Flyer Concierge team takes the hard work out of finding reward seat availability. Using their expert knowledge and specialised tools, they'll help you book a great trip that maximises the value for your points.

AFF Supporters can remove this and all advertisements

Kiwi Flyer said:
Seat maps are a bad way of assessing how full or otherwise a flight may be. Better than nothing at all, but not very accurate.

Firstly, not everyone allocates a seat. There are lots of reasons why seats may be blocked - from bassinet seats, to airline keeping seats together for a group, seats may be reserved for codeshare pax, etc.
While those issues are certainly applicable to the WHY cabin, they are not such an influence for J/F. In fact with Qantas you will often see one or two less available seats on an E/F seat than there are for sale in the pointy end.
 
T & W are the revenue codes; IIRC T is the discounted booking code for WT+.

As for award redemption codes, I don't believe it's as easy to look up as Qantas' Z, U, T and X are.
 
Last edited:
Yes I can T and W but they arenot the freebie class are they as they both show 9 seats avaliable for the flight I am checking
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Enhance your AFF viewing experience!!

From just $6 we'll remove all advertisements so that you can enjoy a cleaner and uninterupted viewing experience.

And you'll be supporting us so that we can continue to provide this valuable resource :)


Sample AFF with no advertisements? More..
Back
Top