Was looking at an upcoming flight and noticed the following:

BUCKET CLASSES: F1 P0 A0 E0 Y7 B7 M7 H7 V7 Q7 S7 L7 W7 T7

This is a 757-200 (capacity is between 190 and 240 according to Boeing).

Anyways, there are 10 fare classes that each have *at least* 7 seats available. 7 x 10 = 70. Would I be correct to assume that as of right now there are (at least) 70 empty seats on that flight?

More importantly with F showing 1, what do these numbers tell me about FC seat availability?

The F1 means that there is still 1 First Class seat available for sale. The E0 menans there are no upgrades to first class available for discounted coach fares. If the F1 does not get sold it can be used to upgrade at time of departure.

On U's 757, they have reduced First Class from 24 to 8, but since all the planes are not yet reconfigured, they will book the flight based on the lower number and fill up first later.

7 is the maximum any bucket will show and they are not necessarily added together.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Joe Airman:
Would I be correct to assume that as of right now there are (at least) 70 empty seats on that flight?</font>

No. You would be wrong for at least three reasons:

1) The buckets overlap, in other words, if a flight shows Y5 B3 K2, that could represent 5 seats for sale in coach. 2 are available for cheap, 3 for more $, and all 5 are available for BBB's buddies who pay full fare same day walk up farez.

2) For competitive reasons, they do not display all seats. The fare bucket viewers max out at 7 or 9 or whatever. You will never see "Y42" if 42 seats are available, only "Y9" (or whatever the max is set at).

3) Finally as we all know airlines oversell aircraft. So there can be no empty seats and you will see Y5 as they try to oversell the a/c by 5 to make up for no shows.

If you are really interested in how many empty seats exist, look at a seat map viewer. That gives you a better (but not perfect) idea of load factor in F and Y in my experience. The reason it is not perfect is someone can buy a ticket but not get a seat assignment until checkin if they choose.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Joe Airman:
Was looking at an upcoming flight and noticed the following:

BUCKET CLASSES: F1 P0 A0 E0 Y7 B7 M7 H7 V7 Q7 S7 L7 W7 T7

This is a 757-200 (capacity is between 190 and 240 according to Boeing).

Anyways, there are 10 fare classes that each have *at least* 7 seats available. 7 x 10 = 70. Would I be correct to assume that as of right now there are (at least) 70 empty seats on that flight?

More importantly with F showing 1, what do these numbers tell me about FC seat availability?</font>


To answer the first question, no, that would not be a correct assumption. US would prefer to sell all seats in full Y. Therefore, chances are that the entire capacity in economy class can be purchased as a Y fare. A portion of these seats then overlap in the other fare classes. If US' revenue management, for instance, thinks that there is a good chance that they can only sell the fare associated with T, then there could theoretically only be 7 seats left for sale in total (the same 7 seats in all classes). I have seen instances where US opens up all fare classes on the day or two before departure, after most had been zeroed out for quite a while. Probably would mean that they really want to sell a few extra seats, and don't expect anyone paying full Y to come along. Turns out that the flight was oversold, so just because I saw each class showing as a 2 doesn't mean there were 2x10 seats available.

For the second question, it depends whether US will oversell seats on that route. If there is only 1 seat left chances are it is overbooked in F.