Seat Availability

[GDSman]

Saw this thread a bit late....discrepancies in seat availability will be impacted by whether the tool in use is making Direct Connect (DCA) calls or not - many proprietary software tools will use basic calls as, while not showing 'last seat availability', they can sometimes be more reliable (from an 'up-time' perspective).
Seat maps will never reflect the true availability picture. A GDS tool will give the best responses published by the carrier at the time you make the call....availability in classes changes based on REVMAN activity....to you an me it looks like a lottery but there are some clever mathematicians out there with some whacky logarithms that run against availability in real time...hence the variances.

 

[serfty]

... So in theory the seat map is not a very good way to judge the availabiity of seats on a flight. ...

It can give a good idea up until 1-4 weeks before the flight depending on season.

Couple this with the class availability and you can get a reasonable idea.

e.g. Lots of O9, N9, Q9 or even X & T availability a week before a flight indicates there should be plenty of room, the day before means the flight is nearly empty.

Conversely, Y0 H0 K0 means the flight IS chockers!