Sopwith

I had this situation last week ex FCO. I never believed I would get the upgrade (2 seats) because reward tix are at the bottom of the list, notwithstanding that you've paid (in points) for a J ticket. Miraculously, the upgrade cleared, but not at check-in. Had to wait for the GA to do it. Your situation will depend entirely on how many open seats minus other upgrades there are on your flight. Make sure you ask them to put you on the list when you check in.

Good luck!

yqtyyz

Thanks, Sopwith, for sharing your experience. Granted, it's only a 1hr flight from YYZ-YUL, so no big loss.

My uneducated guess is that for such a short mid-day flight, nobody (our esteemed Senators, notwithstanding) would be willing to plunk nearly $1000 for a pod seat.

Sopwith

And BTW, they wouldn't give us lounge access, even though it was technically a J ticket. Had to sit on the floor at the gate. FCO is a horrible airport. Almost as bad as FLL on a cruise ship day.

Lllahim

Where is the evidence that unassigned seats in J distort occupancy shown in seat maps? In my experience, AC always assigns seats in J to paid/upgraded pax. They always assign a seat to me and to anybody I know whenever J is purchased or upgraded to. I think what we see in those seat maps is real. Do you really know otherwise? i tried upgrading YVR-EWR for Jul 16. I am waitlisted. The 4 seats occupied and 10 open seats have been that way for weeks. Unless some of those 4 were latitude upgrades, R must have been 0 from day 1. Should AC be rolling out flights with R set at 0?

canadiancow

I can find you a flight right now with 9 seats in J (E90), 2 occupied on the seat map, but AC is only willing to sell 5.

AC 564 on July 15.

There are many tools that show you how many seats in J are for sale (i.e. unsold seats), and this number does not often correlate well with the number of occupied seats on the map.

Every time I've made a booking on the phone, seats have not been assigned by default. Sometimes, the agent asks "What seat would you like?" and I say "Don't worry, I'll do it online." Other times, I'm just not asked. In either case, I end up with an unassigned seat.

fin 645

The most obvious evidence is when J<9 and the seat map shows more open seats than that, which happens frequently.

In my experience, all ticketed J pax may be allocated seats once OLCI opens, but prior to that, the seat map is merely an indication. I also use the availability of the full range of fares (J, C, D & Z) as another indicator (ie, J9, but other classes less than 9 tells you how tight it is becoming).

AC may not set R0 right when the 356 day booking window opens, but it sure gets that way a long way out on popular routes.

Lllahim

I have no reason to doubt you guys on this. I have moved seats many times for the same flight and have not yet bumped anybody. Just seems strange that seats are shown as open when they are unassigned. I know it happens in Y where Tango seats are unassigned unless sold for a fee.

Lllahim

What makes you believe that those tools are any more accurate than the seat maps for J? I have a different experience from you re agents. The numbers they give me are consistent with the map. Check out YVR - OGG for 1 Dec and OGG-YVR Dec 8. There are 4 of us seating in J and those numbers have not gone up in months. And is still no R space. I just don't appreciate R=0 from day 1.

canadiancow

aircanada.com won't let me buy more than 5 seats in J in my example where J=5 and there are 7 open seats.

YULcookiemonster

Same here. I've read the "don't trust the seat map" advice and heeded it to an extent but thought I could use it at least as an approximation.

However, I've found an example that shows 19 open seats but flightstats now says J8 and aircanada.com will let me buy 8 but not 9 tickets.

Lllahim

AC lacks transparency and likes it that way. I believe that nobody outside a tightly knit group knows how the R games are played. I don't even believe the data you guys provide here on J,R,Z......The changes occur fast and with no credible reason, at least credible to me. It is just like the stock market and the crazy reasons given for falling and rising prices. One day I will take all the data I see in this forum and try modeling them stochastically. They defy deterministic reasoning.

YEGTigger

I'll preface this by saying I'm fairly new to the AC FF ranks, only getting E status for the first time for last year and SE this year. In that time, I have only ever been upgraded on an eUp either at the moment I request or at the gate, nothing in between.

I'm booked YYC-YYZ on Monday, and I made the request last Monday when my upgrade window opened and was put on the waitlist (J7R0). It had been R0 for a couple of weeks at least. I was fully expecting to be upgraded at the gate. This morning at 5am (T-3d7h), I got an email saying I had cleared the upgrade. I checked and the flight was now J3R3.

Does this happen often that they open R space after the upgrade windows open? I hadn't experienced it before, but I'm still new.

BlondeBomber

I would say regularly but not often, at least not to that degree. Having said that, the night before the flight, upgrades can often clear (for SEs at least) without R space having seen to be changed.

ridefar

On this route in particular, it is very unusual for R to go >0 after T-7. In the summer, when business flyers are less common, I am seeing more R space survive past T-7, but this is very atypical.

gabdusch

I've had this happen to me quite often since becoming SE.

In fact, almost every single time I get waitlisted at T-7, like clockwork, two days before the flight at 8-9 AM YUL time I receive the glorious email. R stays at 0. I always receive the email around the same time.

This morning even I got the email for a Sunday night flight that had been idling at J6R0 all week.

The only times its gone down to a gate upgrade was because I had requested the upgrade closer to departure than T-7.

I mostly fly Flex with the occasional M fare and Latitude thrown in for good measure.