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Unofficial AC flight status and information tool (aka cowtool)

Unofficial AC flight status and information tool (aka cowtool)

Old Dec 11, 22, 3:49 pm
  #16  
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Originally Posted by fysloc View Post
Not sure if it's doable, but is it possible to see number of sold/available seats on a flight that don't have seats assigned yet?

One thing I would be curious about is if a flight is oversold and people can expect to get bumped off despite having a ticket.
As far as I know the only systems that show you that data require an employee login.
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Old Dec 11, 22, 5:12 pm
  #17  
 
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Originally Posted by canadiancow View Post
AC operated. There's a lot of logic in there to handle AC-specific things. I'm not trying to build an EF competitor. I'm trying to make my life easier when I fly AC.



You'd be surprised how much easier it is to diagnose issues with my little codes there

But I agree, that's on my list.



Maybe, but it would need an intermediate step to allow you to then pick a flight. I'm not saying it's impossible (or even difficult), but it would likely be a completely different tool that just links to this one.



What kind of alerts do you want? AC with 1A is pretty good about notifying of changes. Unofficial AC Schedule Change Notifier is also pretty good.

As I said, I'm not trying to replicate EF, so I don't really think I'm interested in building type/FIN swaps or seat availability alerts. But maybe. But there's so much other stuff to do first.



What's your goal there? It never occurred to me that anyone would use this for anything other than "I'm booked on this flight and want more information" (but the reward search tool also underwent some very rapid changes at the beginning when I realized people wanted to use it very differently than I assumed).
Thanks to all, good to know the purpose of this - then it's fine as it is I guess, and personally won't use/need it due to the AC-operated filter

Happy holidays in advance
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Old Dec 14, 22, 3:03 am
  #18  
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Well step 1 of inbound tracking is done:


Recursive tracking does sound interesting, I'm just worried it would slow things down too much unless I can find a good source where I can just feed it a registration and get a list of the last dozen flights. FlightAware has an API, but I'd need the "minimum $100/month" plan to make this possible.
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Old Dec 14, 22, 4:33 am
  #19  
 
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Originally Posted by canadiancow View Post
Believe me, if I found a way to get fare class availability, that would have been a cowtool a long time ago.

Counting the available seats tells you basically nothing.
May I ask if there is any way to just display R space? I see that information in your award search, but not sure if you have access to this information in all AC flights.
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Old Dec 14, 22, 4:38 am
  #20  
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Originally Posted by Changeup2000 View Post
May I ask if there is any way to just display R space? I see that information in your award search, but not sure if you have access to this information in all AC flights.
It might be possible, but I can't think of any way to do it that either:
1. Would consistently work
2. Would make me happy
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Old Dec 14, 22, 5:00 am
  #21  
 
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Originally Posted by canadiancow View Post
It might be possible, but I can't think of any way to do it that either:
1. Would consistently work
2. Would make me happy
Your tools certainly made me (and countless others) happier many times!

Just thought about switching my upcoming YYZ - YVR flight to YYZ - SFO due to concerns over snowing in YVR, and found R space available using your reward tool. Still debating whether to make the move, tho.
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Old Feb 7, 23, 12:33 am
  #22  
 
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Okay, so have a question about the seat map display.

I'm looking at two flights for YYZ-YVR on Feb 8th, AC107 which shows 3 blocked seats in J, and EF reports J3, and AC111 which shows 2 blocked seats in J, but EF reports J0. In both cases all other J seats are occupied.

What does blocked actually mean?
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Old Feb 7, 23, 1:07 am
  #23  
 
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The blocked seats represent people who will be potentially upgraded into those seats. They will get the seat at the gate.

If a revenue customer buys a ticket, then the blocked seat will be taken by the revenue customer.
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Old Feb 7, 23, 5:32 am
  #24  
 
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Originally Posted by The Macker View Post
The blocked seats represent people who will be potentially upgraded into those seats. They will get the seat at the gate.

If a revenue customer buys a ticket, then the blocked seat will be taken by the revenue customer.
so on the seat with 3 blocked seats they were still selling J, but on the flight with 2, they were no longer selling At all

For safety I bought a seat on the one showing some J availability but it was just strange.
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Old Feb 7, 23, 2:02 pm
  #25  
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Originally Posted by The Macker View Post
Originally Posted by CdnFlier View Post
What does blocked actually mean?
The blocked seats represent people who will be potentially upgraded into those seats. They will get the seat at the gate.
It's not just waitlisted eUps. It can also be staff on passes and other things. As discussed at length in this thread.

If a revenue customer buys a ticket, then the blocked seat will be taken by the revenue customer.
In what sense do you mean "taken"? The person with the J ticket will sit in J in the end, but may not a seat assignment until the gate.

Originally Posted by CdnFlier View Post
so on the seat with 3 blocked seats they were still selling J, but on the flight with 2, they were no longer selling At all.
Seat blocking and loads should not be conflated.
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Last edited by Adam Smith; Feb 7, 23 at 2:37 pm Reason: Fixed formatting
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Old Feb 7, 23, 2:18 pm
  #26  
 
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These are also neutral seatmaps. The seatmap you see for your booking may be different and seats that show as blocked in the neutral map may be available for you to select.
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Old Feb 21, 23, 11:25 pm
  #27  
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I was having some issues with flights that have stops (eg 856 YYZ-LHR-BOM), so I made some changes, and now require you to specify your destination.

It helped fix some other issues, but the arrival information for flights with stops is a big one that now works properly.

In theory I could also show the stop information, and I might get to that at some point, but I'm tired now.
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