Originally Posted by
drthunder
Trying to understand seat blocking... What does it mean if the seats are blocked on the seat map that you get when searching for Air Canada flights, they're also showing as blocked on Expert Flyer, but if you go through a mock booking, those blocked seats are all available to select.
We are a couple days before the flight, the number of seats for sale in J seems to stay the same, the availibility on Expert Flyer is the same (well, it went from J3 C2 R0 to J3 C3 R0), but new seats have been getting blocked every day.
The short answer is to treat blocked seats in J as available.
The long answer is complicated. One scenario (of many possibilities) is that waitlisted upgrades have seats "assigned" to them, resulting in a block on the neutral map. However, any revenue pax will be able to select them.
This system can be used for more interesting things, like "don't allow the seat beside an SE to be selected until it's absolutely necessary". But in J, it seems to be a side effect, and not serve any real purpose... unless you can find an agent competent enough to change your "waitlisted seat", so you clear into the seat you want.