OLCI - Seats not available, yet not reserved?

[Febs]

(Yes, another OLCI question from Febs )

Hi all,

I flew SYD-MEL today and OLCI'd yesterday (about 22hours before the flight, seq nbr 2) into seat 23E. From rows 23 and 24, there was only 23E and 24E available. I checked throughout the day (and up to about 11pm) and same story. Fair enough - higher status pax had already been allocated the better seats in row 23. No problems there.

Thing is - on the actual plane, only 23A, 23E, 23F, 24A and 24F were taken. All the other seats in row 23/24 were available.

Of course I promptly moved myself to 23D (to give both myself and the guy in 23F some leg/arm room), but why would these not have been available via OLCI? I find it hard to believe that the pax in 23B, D, J, K and 24B, D, E, J and K all no-showed, or cancelled their flights between 11pm and 6:30am.

Cheers,
- Febs.

 

[Optics]

(Yes, another OLCI question from Febs )

Hi all,

I flew SYD-MEL today and OLCI'd yesterday (about 22hours before the flight, seq nbr 2) into seat 23E. From rows 23 and 24, there was only 23E and 24E available. I checked throughout the day (and up to about 11pm) and same story. Fair enough - higher status pax had already been allocated the better seats in row 23. No problems there.

Thing is - on the actual plane, only 23A, 23E, 23F, 24A and 24F were taken. All the other seats in row 23/24 were available.

Of course I promptly moved myself to 23D (to give both myself and the guy in 23F some leg/arm room), but why would these not have been available via OLCI? I find it hard to believe that the pax in 23B, D, J, K and 24B, D, E, J and K all no-showed, or cancelled their flights between 11pm and 6:30am.

Cheers,
- Febs.

That seems odd. I have not used OLCI, as I can't really see any benefit in it for me (being WP, I usually get allocated the best currently available, or at least I hope so). But anyway, from my experience they usually leave the centre seats vacant if possible, and fill the aisle and window seats first. This is my biggest gripe with OLCI, pax allocated a window or aisle towards the back using OLCI to move themselves forward into a centre seat, and thus taking what would have been a free seat next to me.

 

[serfty]

Did you have a look down the back to see how full the flight was?

It is very likely that the aircraft was extremely lightly loaded and seats were blocked to allow an even distribution of PAX.

A month ago, coming back from ADL to MEL I found myself"down" in 7C on a 734. I kept checking all day until it closed an hour before the 5pm flight but could not get a more forward aisle seat.

Turns out on boarding the aircraft had about 30 WHY PAX with a few in J.

I was in the most forward row actually allocated with no-one in 7A/B - rows 4, 5 & 6 were empty.

When the doors closed, the Guy in 7D upgraded himself to 6A to let the couple in 7D/E have some more room.

 

[Febs]

Did you have a look down the back to see how full the flight was?

It is very likely that the aircraft was extremely lightly loaded and seats were blocked to allow an even distribution of PAX.

Ahh, that makes sense. Flight was pretty empty. Still - you'd think placing two pax in D and F would be considered a more even distribution than E and F! Meh, it wasn't hard to get up and move.

Cheers,
- Febs.