Originally Posted by
td777
Do the fare bucket numbers on expertflyer tell you how many seats the airline is still willing/able to sell for each particular fare class?
That's mostly correct, although some of the fare buckets overlap. For instance for a domestic flight, F9 A9 doesn't necessarily mean they're willing to sell 18 seats in the F cabin, but it does mean they're willing to sell at least 9 seats in the F cabin.
Originally Posted by
td777
I'm just wondering if the seat map that I see as full Y cabin actually means that it's full, and they're just still selling L/U/T fares since there are so many F/J seats still empty, and would Op-Up people out of an oversold Y cabin? Is this the case for a possible Intl Op-Up, or am I just wishing?
The seatmap will show full before the cabin is actually full, as a number of seats are held back for assignment at the airport, so a full seatmap doesn't necessarily mean that a flight is oversold in Y. You are correct that if there is room in F/Biz, they are willing to keep selling Y seats as they can always op-up, but if EF is showing L9 U9 T9, I doubt your particular flight is oversold.