StuMcIlwain

I've been doing some research into Aeroplan inventory using the Galileo-CRS site recommended by CPYVR. (Thanks!) I've only looked at the YOW-YYC nonstop route, but I may look at some others as time allows to try and understand better what Aeroplan is doing. The YOW-YYC route is one that I have been completely unsuccessful at finding award seats in the last year. I have no idea whether the trends apparent on this route also apply to others, but I suspect that they do.

If you look at award seat availability for next October, well beyond the booking threshold for even the most zealous trip-of-a-lifetime award bookers, you will find that the availablity is 2D/6W on the morning A320 and 2D/5W on the evening A319 every day of the week. This is 15 out of 260 available seats each day, or 5.8% of capacity.

For most dates from roughly 1 to 3 months from now, almost no award seats are available. Sometimes you get lucky and find 1 or 2 on a certain flight, but that's the exception not the norm.

Then starting about one month from now, seats start appearing on the empty flights (which, on this route, is usually all of them). First they start appearing midweek. Then they start appearing every day, so if you want to fly next Sunday, for example, there are 8W seats available. (That's an extreme example, but there are seats on most flights.) But I suspect that you wouldn't have been able to find a single award seat a month ago for next Sunday; you certainly can't for Sunday February 16th.

AC claims to set aside an average of 10% of the seats for awards per route. But they only say "set aside", not "give out". I suspect that many of the award seats set aside at the last minute are never claimed.

The US airlines set aside roughly 7% of their seats for awards, but I don't know if they also add seats at the last minute and include those seats in the tally. But that could explain why it seems to be easier to get award seats in advance on other airlines.

StuMcIlwain

Just quickly checked some other routes at random. Initial award availability on transborder routes ranges from 6 - 9% of capacity, with more routes at the high end of the range than the low end. But initial award availability on domestic routes is as low as 4% of capacity, although something around 5-6% of capacity is more common. This explains a lot, doesn't it.

StuMcIlwain

YYZ-YEG seems to only have roughly 3.5% of the available capacity initially assigned to Aeroplan awards.

ProudEdmontonian

Yes, but I'm sure if you go the the AP site and request availability it will show the most ludicrous routings possible in order to get the % higher. Additonally, the website will also think nothing of including several days' gaps between connections to go from point A to point B.

I've seen a number of occasions where to go YEG to YYZ, AP will offer YEG-YYC-YWG-YYZ or YEG-YWG-YOW-YYZ. Routings like this appear the closer one gets to one's desirable departure dates.

Or let's say you want to leave on a Monday returning on a Sunday. The site will offer departure YEG-YYC on Monday and then YYC-YWG late that day with a final leg in the afternoon on Wednesday to YYZ. Happens all the time.... Indeed as I've pointed out frequently on errorplan.com I've even been offered delay connections that don't arrive until after I've already wanted to return (not that these could ever be ticketed I'll admit but boy is this lousy programming or what?? )

exAC

Stu:

Do I understand correctly then. That you have seen on the domestic routes that more reward seats are added at 30 days before departure if the flights are empty???

StuMcIlwain

Yes. But I haven't tracked any flights over a period of time. I've just looked at the award availability today on a given route and found that there are lots of seats available on empty flights leaving in 1-30 days, but hardly any seats available on the same flights leaving in 31-90 days.

[This message has been edited by StuMcIlwain (edited 01-12-2003).]

StuMcIlwain

I think this is just the software trying hard to find you a seat when there are hardly any available. YYZ-YEG non-stop is a route, and 10% of the available seats could well be assigned to Aeroplan awards if you include all the extra seats that they add at the last minute. Or maybe not ... we'll never be able to know for sure.

Andrew Yiu

I hope you know it's 10% of the available capacity per month will be made available to AE awards. Not per day.

So if you're looking at YYZ-YEG; YYZ-YYC-YEG also counts (and this counts for YYZ-YYC and YYZ-YEG and YYZ-YYC).

[This message has been edited by Empress (edited 01-12-2003).]

YVR Cockroach

Can someone please post a link to that AC site (in German) which returns inventory based on fare code?

PreferBulkhead

Try this front-end:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...ravel/galileo/

Andrew Yiu

Think AC likes you finding out exactly how many award seats there are availble with this link?

ProudEdmontonian

Oh, I'm painfully aware of this but usually with more connections!!

Tractor Boy

Also remember that with most of the US airlines even BASIC members have the opportunity to pull instant KK seats from revenue for ANY location on just about ANY day at a 150%-200% rate. Only SEs get this opportunity with AC.

As a basic member with AAdvantage I have better reward seat availaibility than as an Elite with AC.

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Saturday nights should be spent with family.

StuMcIlwain

Oh, yes. The numbers I quoted above were the seats available looking at about 10 different days in October. In most cases, the number of seats available each day was about the same, although they were sometimes distributed on different flights.
I disagree. I distinctly remember AC saying per route, not per city-pair or destination. YYZ-YEG is one route, YYZ-YYC is another, and YYC-YEG is a third.

But regardless, this is interesting.

Altaflyer

I have suspected this scam for some time. I am pleased that someone has actually looked at the situation. By loading W8 type availability 10 days before the flight AC is making 10% of its seats "available" for award. Of course this is a farce as some of these seats will go empty. Empress, I bet if we did a study of a route 355 days out for a month we would not get anywhere near 10% allocation. Throwing "wasted" seats to the wolves a few days before departure is not living up to the commitment, at least not how most people would understand the commitment.