Originally Posted by
mitchmu
What you said is the common perspective on FT. But, in my practical experience, I find seat maps to be more valuable than they are given credit for and I look at the maps as well as the fare class buckets.
Recently, I had an eye-opener. There was a thread where it was discussed that LH actually holds back fare class availability (capped at 4) even when it's larger than 4. This made me realize that there could be a case where a fare bucket shows something less than 9, but, there are more than 9 seats for sale, because an airline might not show all inventory.
Why they do this? I have no idea. But, it shows the value of checking seat maps to corroborate what is shown in fare buckets.
Fare buckets can be > 9 and there can be fewer seats if they are planning to oversell also.
United does do this. Three weeks ago I was watching BCN-EWR with a waitlisted GPU. The seat map was showing relatively empty and the fare classes for economy were all 9 with J7 (PMCO 757 bird with 16 business). Feeling pretty good about my chances. All of a sudden all the fare classes drop to 0 or 1. I panic and look at the seat map, still very open.
Then I realize that with the Sandy impact not fully known (this was for a flight the Saturday after Sandy), United was likely stopping sales to the Newark area. Sure enough two days before the flight when EWR was open again, the fare classes went back in and my upgrade cleared. That is a definite example where the seat map was more useful than the fare classes.