zachbb

I understand that the US border is closed to Europeans, and that the EU border is closed to Americans, except under certain situations. I fall under one of those situations, so was granted a visa (with an annotation saying I can enter to US). I'm planning on leaving on July 27. However, I'm a bit worried about flight loads due to COVID, and really don't want to rub shoulders with someone in economy for the whole 6-7 hours. Here are the factors I've considered:

• There are fewer travelers due to closed borders
• People can still transit through CDG
• There is reduced capacity - There is only 1 direct flight CDG-BOS every three days (as opposed to many everyday usually)

I don't have the money to buy a cash business ticket, but for the same cost as my economy AF flight, I have the option of spending some miles to fly business on British Airways transiting through LHR instead (and so have so have greater seperation from other passangers due to the busines cabin). I think I'd rather have a shorter, direct trip on economy on AF, but only if the conditions aren't cramped. Does anyone have any insight on travelling France-USA on AF in July?

Goldorak

You need to realize that no one can answer your question. We can just say that, while short- and medium-haul flights are really packed, most long-haul flights have low loads because of all the restrictions in place. But there could be some exceptions of course with full flights. But, whatever the situation is for your flight, just relax, and behave normally with the standard precautions and everything will be fine. CDG-BOS is a short flight.

Often1

No way to predict. Flight could be empty right now and a single cancellation means that disrupted passengers are rebooked onto your flight and it is packed.

zachbb

I thought that someone might either have experience on such a flight, or have access to the flight loads for recent flights.

Goldorak

any datapoint from another flight would be irrelevant for your flight. And no one can access loads of past flights unless you work for AF and this is confidential data anyway that no AF employee would disclose.

Goldorak

I can feel your anxiety reading your 2 posts. Sincerely, you should just relax. Everything will be fine whatever your flight is empty or full

bostontraveler

What has happened over the past two months (I say 2 months because that is when the schedules were removed, not the duration of the pandemic) is we have gone from
2x Daily AF
2x Daily DL

So 28 frequencies originally.

Delta first cancelled July and was supposed to start service on August 2nd.
Yesterday, Delta cancelled all CDG-BOS service, effectively means we now have 3 weekly frequencies, compared to 6 last week.

I don't think AF will cut any more than they have but given that my reservations have been canceled and moved at least 5 times I wouldn't be shocked. But it's less likely than it was yesterday since AF has effectively picked up all of the passengers booked on DL. Granted, that's effective August 2nd but we are three weeks away- and two weeks away from your flight.

That said, how many people fit into the dual citizen or special visa category? I would venture to say a small percentage of travelers. I doubt the flights will be very full.

zachbb

Thanks for the replies, and the reassurances. What I have done is started to look at the seat maps of the next few flights. I noticed that in flights this week, AF blocks the middle seat. In the late July flights, AF blocks huge sections off (there are 3 rows of unavailable seats and then a block of available seats). It's the same seat map on basically every flight, with the same seats listed as "not available".

However, some of the seats in the "not avaliable" area are listed as "occupied" on some flights. Any idea how people were able to reserve these seats if they have been blocked off? Is it a status thing?

I'm just curious...

Goldorak

some rows at the front are blocked for Elites. They are released for everyone at check in.
Keep in mind that the seat map is a very poor indicator of the actual loads, especially since advanced seat selection comes at a fee for non-status pax.

bostontraveler

What exactly are you trying to determine? If the flights are full or if they are going to operate?

Re the former, it's fair to assume 30-50% are blocked. At the same time, as I mentioned above, who can travel now? We are talking about maybe 10% of the traveling population that has two passports/special visas/etc. Let's double that to 20% for hypothetical purposes.
Of 20%... how many *want* to travel now? How many *need* to travel?

Again, I come back to the fact that we have a very small captive audience.

With airlines canceling sometimes less than days in advance I don't think even THEY know what the real demand is.

If there is an outburst on either side demand could evaporate in a day.

Anyway, all I mean to say is that you may be asking for a crystal ball that nobody has..........

zachbb

Neither, I'm just genuinely curious as to how the seats are blocked and who has access to them. I took a screenshot to show what I mean. As you can see 30-31, 35-36, 38-40 and 39-40, 42-43, and 45 are all blocked. They aren't occupied (marked with an X), they are unavailable (no X). I checked multiple flights and these same seats are blocked on all the flights.

I don't imagine they are reserved for elites as they have nothing special to them (e.g. they aren't the first seats in the cabin). I also noticed that prior flights CDG-BOS had the middle seats blocked (grey icon, no X), so I'm guessing this is a new way of seperating groups of pax for COVID. So my questions are:
1. Am I correct in assuming tthese are blocked for COVID?
2. How come some people managed to book the blocked segments (e.g. 30D, 39A, 39B)?

Again, I'm only curious as to what is technically happening, and not trying to draw any inferences to the flight load.

nallison

Looking at the seat map for my flight MEX-CDG tmw it seems fairly clear they're blocking seats to allow distancing, and setae actually occupied is incredibly low. Of course though they will only do this where loads allow. (Unless they're saving those desirable middle seats in the 77W for elites!)

I can only think there must be awful lot of cargo between Mex and Europe with AF now flying daily, and Aeroméxico, KLM and Lufthansa flying between the two (haven't checked how regular they are). Mexicans can't fly to Europe and I don't think many Europe as are flying to Mexico right now....

bostontraveler

1) Yes, I think you are correct.

2) I think what is happening is happening in a different order. I believe there is an algorithm initially blocking seats (probably health, desirability/demand-driven) which then gets adjusted over time based on bookings.
In my case several times so far I have booked (both in J and Y) and then noticed the next day that a seat/seats were blocked next to/around me.

Now why they blocked seats around me... might be the cologne? Passenger complaints? (kidding)

bostontraveler

As a follow-up, I'm scheduled to leave in the next few weeks so I have been looking at Expertflyer frequently.... every day is wide open in terms of fare class category. Also, every day AF is pricing business at 62.5K and economy at 23K (the lowest price in that market) so my hunch is that the demand is extremely weak. Otherwise AF would price accordingly.
On my flight I was the only person prior to Delta's cancellations-- now there are 5 people in Business... in theory because you can't always trust seat maps, especially now.
But if they are any indication I'm seeing about 20 pax per flight... pretty dreadful but in line with what I would expect.
AF has to be deriving most of its revenue from cargo... that demand has not decreased but the supply in the transatlantic alliance has evaporated so I suspect that is the only reason they are operating.

So given that I will be one of maybe 5 passengers, does that mean we get Krug, a personally-crafted meal by an onboard chef and a pre-arrival snack of Beluga caviar?