Was the J cabin full?
 

Hi guys,

I took the photo below before boarding a flight, to ask you this question: does CONFIGURATION: 35 and REGULAR MEALS: 32 mean that the business class cabin had 3 available seats?

I had set up an ExpertFlyer alert for an upgrade which never triggered. Why do you think AF would pass on the opportunity to have me burn my miles, if there were indeed 3 empty seats??

Thanks :)

http://i.imgur.com/ieektJ1.jpg

European airlines don't stuff the premium cabins completely full, as some of their American counterparts do.

With 32 out of 35 seats taken, revenue management probably decided the J cabin was full enough not to open any further award seats. And of course, any last-minute buyer would have paid a handsome price for one of these last remaining seats, so it's nice to keep some space for such purchasers.

I think upgrade space is more likely to be opened up at the last minute when there is only a light load in the J cabin. When it's already pretty full...there is less need to fill it up.

It looks like W was 100% full, so it may even have been oversold, meaning that they may have had to upgrade some W pax - or at least keep seats available for potential op-ups.

Makes total sense, thank you irishguy28 :)

Would some business class seats have been reserved for crew rest on this route?

This could have changed recently, but AF FB has often not opened last-minute awards even if flights were not full (or even heavy loads). I believe that this is more than having a precautionary motive.
As mentioned above, AF and many non-American airlines do not try to fill their premium cabin to the hilt. I believe that they wish to introduce stiff uncertainty and avoid pax getting predictable strategies. It is not overly difficult to guess which flights will have empty J seats and pax could avoid buying expensive J ticket by astute use of miles.

On the other hand, KL at least makes every effort to flog as many J seats as possible using online auctions, OLCI upgrade offers and on board pre-departure sales.

I get the impression that they consider cash flow a lot more important than keeping seats empty to enhance the feeling of exclusivity.

Johan

No, AF doesn't do that. Their planes have special crew rest area.

I think that no airline wants to keep seats free to enhance the feeling of exclusivity. They want to sell them. But they all have different strategies in doing so. Such a strategy can result in empty seats, for example because they rather want someone pay full fare J at the last moment rather than offer them for a handful of miles.

It is not relevant how many seats were taken, it is relevant how many seats they expected to sell (in all cabins), a major difference.

Conspiracy theorists always believe that an airline did something on purpose to deny them their perks & bennies..., which is not the case in 99.99% of all cases.

In your case, they probably expected a full house, maybe some people did not make the connection, which usually becomes reality after 99% have boarded the aircraft, so even a well managed airline (offering last second upgrades at the gate) would not be able to upgrade anyone without a major hassle...