TheViperOne

I’m on ACA835 on 26 Sept. I’ve been tracking this flight for like a month or more. It’s been zeroed out completely (J, PY, and Y), then overnight some nights it’ll go up to a more reasonable load for this type of flight (J8,O4,Y9) then when I wake up it’ll be zeroed out again across the board. Then a few nights later it’ll go back to J8,O4,Y9 again or something. Then zero out again.

I’ve never seen this before in the 3 years since I’ve been flying regularly and keeping track of this kind of thing. Any ideas on what’s going on? I may change to the flight on the 27th instead as it’s been holding steady at the same load with lots of J space for weeks while this one keeps flip flopping. It’s a 789 so I find it hard to believe it’s been fully booked J for months on a random Monday in Sept?

TheViperOne

Weird situation with flights to and from MUC with Mrs Viper.

Started checking flight loads about a month out regularly and set up alerts on EF. All flights around our date were J8 or J9 except our flight was zeroed out across the board except for Y2 or Y1 some days. Every few days I’d get an alert in the middle of the night at like 3 or 4am that J was now between 6 or 8. Changed depending on the day. I confirmed I could go on and purchased full J tickets, but like 5 min after that alert the seats would get blocked again. This happened daily right up until the flight. One night I stayed up as I was working nights anyway and waited for the email and upfared because we didn’t want to chance it. Same thing happened. Seats were blocked off again right after I upfared.

I suspected AC employees were blocking off J seats. The upgrade list read 30/30 with only 12 checked in until right before they ran the upgrades to which it went down to 22/30 and everyone on the list ended up getting upgraded. Strange.

Sure enough as we board there’s 3 pilots, and about 8 men and women in business attire with AC name badges and AC masks on. Looked like to me someone kept those seats blocked for over a month so that nobody could buy cash J and the employees could sit in J.

canadiancow

That's a great way to lose employee travel benefits (or get fired), if true.

I'd be more inclined to believe it was revenue pax with eUps doing it, if anyone was doing it.

If the pilots were deadheading, they'd be guaranteed J anyway. I'm pretty sure most (all?) levels of management also get J when they travel for work. So I don't know why they'd do it.

ACYYZ/SD

There is no way of blocking off a seat short of booking a reservation with an accompanying form of payment (credit card).
For the record there were no deadheading crew members on AC835-26. There may have been Company Management who's priority affords them J anyway.

MUC flights have been operating with a combination of 788's (20J seats) and 789's (30J seats) and fin swapping may have been at play.

TheViperOne

Fair enough it was just a guess as to what was happening. There were 3 uniformed pilots in J. Not sure why if they weren’t deadheading. Maybe using as crew rest.

Could have been something going on with AC IT blocking the seat loads leading up to departure. Was very strange nonetheless. Thanks for the update SD

ACYYZ/SD

Entirely possible that they were doing training abroad as there is a shortage of simulator space here at home.

canadiancow

That would still give them all their normal deadhead rights of J, correct?

ACYYZ/SD

If they were on business related travel they would have a J entitlement, and could pass through security in uniform with their RAIC badge. Technically deadheading refers to travel as it relates to an operational cycle.