What is Galileo?
 

Hi all,

What is Galileo? I understand it is the booking brains but how do I get access to it to review I fares etc as has been mentioned elsewhere?

Also is this the right forum or is this forum meant to be for miles earning discussion only?!

Rich

On topic? Here in the BA forum? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

www.aeroplan.de/ap_rb_galileo.htm is one way of getting into Galileo. It's a German interface. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/...ileo/frame.asp will give you an English language interface with some explanation. One of the buttons on www.seatmap.com will also do this job.

What you will see through all of these is availability by booking class. It is important to remember that this is the availability presented to the German market. It can be different from that presented to the UK market but AFAIK there is no comparable UK-based access.

[This message has been edited by Globaliser (edited 10-07-2003).]

Great!

seatmap.com is neat! So if it shows up as taken does that mean I am not able to pre-assign myself to that seat?

Looks like my flight tomorrow is full!

Rich

No Sweetheart, it means that (if it is C) they hold back oodles of seats and release quite a lot when OLCI comes alive 24 hours out.

(I'm talking just like a real live AA Board poster!)

If there no available seats showing on seatmap.com, then you probably can't pre-allocate anything. Exceptions are if you have high status when a call to res or the EC may get some seats released. But only 30-35% of seats are pre-allocated on long haul, so the flight may actually be far from full. The class availability display may give some clues, but even flights that have 9 available for sale in every class on the day of departure may sometimes depart full.

How do I check class availability? Is there a guide to understanding the Galileo coding?

And references have been made to Fare Explorer. Is this just search engines on different booking sites or is it relating to the specific BA search engine.

Rich

These are the most common revenue classes for BA and other oneworld carriers:-
FA - first class
JCDI - business class
WT - premium economy (ie World Traveller Plus)
YBHKMLVNSQO - economy

The digit after the class shows the minimum number of seats which the airline is offering for confirmed reservation in that booking class. More may be available but some airlines will never show more than 4 or 7. BA will show up to 9.

0 means the seat may not confirm, but waitlist requests will probably be accepted.
L means waitlist only.
C means class closed (no waitlist requests accepted).
X (I think) means on request.

Fare Explorer is simply BA's own pick-your-date-then-pick-your-flight booking interface on the BA website. For itineraries involving only non-stop flights, it's a very powerful tool for quick multi-day searching for the lowest available fare in any cabin, even if it's not perfect.

For anything complex, nobody has yet devised anything as good as, let alone better than, easySabre. RIP.

Globaliser,
Thanks for this, very timely. Just been doing battle with our travel agent who was insisiting that a flight was full when Galileo was showing availability. Just had a rather sullen message from them that "one seat just became free after all" http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif