Joetsu

I’m booked on the BA0008 flight flying business leaving at 9:45 am on December 24th. Is it possible to find out how many seats are still available in business for this flight?

Globaliser

What do you mean by "how many seats are still available"?

If the question is about which physical seats on board the aircraft you can still pre-allocate at this stage, that question can be answered by going to MMB on ba.com and looking at the seat map. Other sources such as ExpertFlyer can also provide this information.

If the question is about how many reservations have been taken in that cabin for that flight, AIUI that is commercially confidential information which only insiders will have access to, and they may not be prepared to publish that information on a public forum.

If the question is the very different one of how many reservations BA is still prepared to take in that cabin for that flight, AIUI that is again commercially confidential information. In particular, that information would give away BA's current overbooking limit for that flight.

Joetsu

Globaliser

One idea: Are there any award seats available? If so, do you have (or can you get) enough Avios to book a seat? If you do that, then you can cancel the ticket up to 24 hours before departure of the first flight for a full refund (less a small cancellation fee: £35 if you're a UK member).

Or you could simply watch availability and pricing. Tell him that when the price goes up, it'll be too late and it'll be his own fault for not making up his mind.

Or just give him an ultimatum.

snaxmuppet

This is from Expert Flyer:

BA8
24/12/18 9:45 HND
24/12/18 13:25 LHR
777
Su,M,Th,F,Sa
71% / 22m

F9 A9 J9 C9 D9 R9 I9 W9 E9 T9 Y9 B9H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N6 Q0 O1 G0

So more than 9 available in classes J, C, D, R & I... so more than 9 then in business.

LTN Phobia

Watch out for the advance purchase requirements in that case. Some fares have 28-day advance purchase requirements, some have 14, etc.

Globaliser

That's the number of reservations that BA is prepared to take now, but it doesn't give you any idea about how long you can play chicken for.

Flights that look like that this far out can be all zeroes by a couple of weeks from departure.

thijsseh

From the discussion above, you would like to know how many seats in J BA is still prepared to sell for that flight.

Expert Flyer shows: J9 C9 D9 R9 I9.
This means that BA is prepared to sell 9 or more seats in Business Class at any of the commercial Business Class fares. EF (or any other similar engine) will not show more than 9. And one cannot add the 5 different fare buckets and conclude that there are 45 seats for sale. But the conclusion would be that - at this moment - the business class cabin is very much open for bookings.