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Old Oct 13, 2013 | 5:21 pm
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serfty
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Originally Posted by savitar
...

My rough maths says that there are about 260 seats in economy and the numbers you quoted are 85. So is that 85 free or 85 taken? Or something else?
No, those loading indicate Qantas are only willing to sell 8 Business class seat but 9 (or more) Economy seats.

FWIW, It's more than expert flyer, this is how the Majority of airlines show fare availability for a flight.

The Alphabetic characters represent "fare bucket" codes and the numbers adjacent to each represent the minimum number of seats in that fare bucket an airline is prepared to sell for a particular flight at the time of query.

Now with the numbers, in order to keep competitors somewhat in the dark as to how many seats are actually available, the airlines have their own determined maximum number to reveal at any one time.

For QF it's generally 9, for AA it's 7 and for JQ, 4. If you see these number it means at leat that many - anything less indicated the availability is limited.

As a general rule of thumb, the letters indicate availability in a descending notional value order from left to right.

First is not mentioned but F A and P are the classes. e.g. Say the flight had First Class and was showing F6 A6 P0. This would indicate Qantas are willing to sell up to 6 seats in the First Class cabin. This at either the full rate (F) or discounted (A), but no award seats (P). This does not mean that there are 12 seats available. Note that currently, Qantas First class cabins have 14 'seats'. What would normally happen if someone booked on the flight into one of these code is that both numbers would reduce, i.e. it goes to F5 A5.

Premium Economy fare bucket are not shown but they are W, R T & Z (Z is award).

Now with this loading:
Code:
J8 C8 D6 I2 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L3 V2 SC NC QC OC XC E0
J8 C8 D6 I2: Business class seat and only 8 are up for sale at the Full (J) or Discounted (C) Rate with only 6 at the more discounted (D) rate and 2 at the deep discount rate (I).

Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L3 V2 SC NC QC OC XC E0: These are the Economy buckets and there are probably plenty of seats for sale, but sales for those at the deeper discount (S, N, Q, O) and award seats (X) are closed (indicated by "C").

Care is needed in interpreting the booking class availability as there are wide differences in how bookings go for routes and even particular flights on the same route.

Some may be oversold by lots, if the airline expects a lot of no shows or is willing to operationally upgrade (op-up) passengers. Obviously to op-up the next highest class of service needs room, and maybe even first class if they need to move some pax out of business to make room for op-ups from economy. Different routes/flights/dates will affect how willing the airline is to oversell (and by how many). Each airline will base its own experience for the specific flight to determine the optimum number.

Even without oversold situations there is care needed in interpreting due to the arcane ways of revenue or yield management. For example availability in a certain booking class may be restricted to certain fares (eg allow round trip discounted business but no more RTW business - both of which use the same booking class), to certain markets (eg allow sales ex-Oz for SYD-LAX but not ex-US), to through fares (eg allow SYD-SIN if it is part of SYD-LHR) or excluding through fares (eg allow SYD-SIN only if SIN is the destination). Etc.

Airlines may remove availability even without a sale, or add more availability, if their view on what level of fares they can get for the remaining seats changes.

It takes practice to see how airlines handle these and observe the effect on the booking class availability, and what it means in terms of being able to buy seats, how many and when, upgrade chances (either paid for or op-up), award availability, chances of getting spare seats beside you, etc.

Last edited by serfty; Oct 13, 2013 at 5:32 pm
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