Over the last 4 trips I have been VERY surprised about the wrong information I have been given regarding the seat availability.

Yesterday on AC 3241 (CP operated)from MIA - YYZ I was told the flight was oversold by 20 seats in the back, J was full. I was on the later flight and wanted to get home so I still went to the airport to standby for the flight. The agents there told me probably not a chance to get on, but since I was there I waited. I got on the airplane and was surprised to see the plane had lots of empty seats.

The previous week I also took a CP flight from YWG - YYZ and was given the same story - over sold flight. When I went to check in the agent told me they may be looking for volunteers and I told her I would be interested. About 20 minutes before departure I asked the gate agent how it was looking (i.e. has everybody checked in) and she told me that it looks like they won't be needing any volunteers. When we finally left the plane had at least 50 open seats on a 320.

Has anybody else noticed that load information, especially on the CP flights is way out or are my last few CP flights an isolated incidents?

There are two potential problems:

1) AC and CP res systems cannot talk to each other. CP agents only see their inventory of the flight, but they have no idea how much AC have sold, and vice versa. So when you talk to AC, they know that they have sold everything that they hold on the CP-operated flight, but CP may have scads of available space which the AC overflow can fill.

2) Flights may show as heavily oversold, and then go half-empty when connecting flights fail to arrive on time. This happens most often on flights between major centres that pick up lots of feeder traffic. This might certainly be the case for UA traffic connecting to YYZ in MIA. It seems less likely in YWG, but anything is possible.

I have to admit....the AC ticket counter @ ZRH listed the flight as very empty....but the CRS terminals had it overbooked!?!?

Dorian

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I go with the "disconnected res systems" theory. I've been comparing AC and CP flights on a regular basis lately, and seen some fairly gross anomolies. One example would be only a few full Y fare CP seats available on a CP operated craft, but lots of highly discounted AC seats on the same plane. I've also seen 0 availability on one, and lots of availability on the other.

There are many variations, but the end results is pretty much like you're looking at two completely different airlines, notwithstanding that they are both selling seats on the same flights.

I'd say "disconnected res". Every day my CP operated flights are oversold 10-25 seats. There are usually 1-2 empty or with standby passengers at take off

I hope this problem clears up in October - the date I have been told is when AC & CDN will have their reservation systems mergered. In the meantime the load information we get is pretty useless.

I stood by last weekend for 3 days trying to go standby from ywg-zrh. It took 2 days to get out of YWG and 1 extra from YYZ-ZRH. All flights were supposed (on phone) to be light with lots open in the front and back. HOWEVER, whenever I went to a counter they were oversold by 60.