Originally Posted by
drvannostren
@adam.smith neither have I, but I have had plenty of flight's where the map was only half full, only to board the plane and find the thing nearly maxed out. I think it happens often in YMM, there's lots of guys here who travel a lot but still don't know how to do it, so they never select seats or anything.
Those folks typically buy Tango fares which don't include seat selection. Actually most do, so the seats that are selected are only of a limited subset of people who are either on Int'l itineraries where seat selection on the domestic segment is deemed to be complimentary, or AP reward tickets.
True load numbers at any stage of the process are proprietary to AC, and, as that famous incident of the retired AC employee who went to work for WestJet a number of years ago and allowed his credentials to be used for data mining purposes showed, highly coveted by the competition for the purposes of route planning.