RMO

Hello everyone,

This is my first post on this board. I've read some threads where members asked for load factors on specific flights and I too would love to know what are my chances of getting free rows to stretch in Economy or an op-up on my next flights.

Could anyone please check this for me? I would appreciate it very much.

Thanks!

LondonElite

Welcome to FT, RMO!

Unfortunately, there is no way for the general public to determine load factors, much less how the seats are allocated.

There are two things you can find out. The first is a vague indication of how many seats remain available for sale. Again, only the airline itself will know the exact number, but there are several services that can tell you the minimum number of seats available to purchase. This will give you a vague idea of how empty or full a flight will be. The problem with this is that economy seats are broken down into a dozen or more fare classes, and the public services only tell you if a minimum of 9 seats are available in a particular fare class. These constantly shift around, so telling you that there are Y9 B6 M5 N3 available means that there are at least 9 seats available to purchase, not 23. In fact there may be only 7 seats available and the airline is betting that 2 people won't show up. And this information differs from point of sale, even for the same flight.

The other thing you can do is look at the seat map on the airline's website. But this only tells you which seats have been selected or assigned, not sold. I suspect you want to know this information before you buy the ticket, and at this point not many people may have selected seats.

In short, no, there is no way for you to know with any amount of confidence whether you'll have access to a row to yourself.

RMO

Hello, LondonElite,

What are those services and where can I find them? I don't mind if I get only a vague idea. I'm just curious because the outbound flight is in less than 30 days from today on and by looking at the seat map only 24% of Y seats are selected - even though there might be more passengers booked who haven't chosen yet their seats as you've pointed out above.

LondonElite

Try expertflyer.com, or kvstool.com. The former gives you a trial period. But note that the information you will get will look something like this:

Y9 B9 M8 N7 S7 T7 G6 Q6 K6 L6 E6 H5 V0

All you will know for certain is that you can buy 9 economy seats. You know nothing about the load factor for the flight, other than that some seats have already been sold.

RMO

Thanks.

This is what I've got for my outbound flight: F4 A4 J7 C7 I7 O7 P0 Y9 E9 R9 W9 M9 B9 U9 K9 H9 Q9 L9 T9 V9 X9

About 76% of the seats in Y are still available for selection. If I assume that most people do select their seats when they book and taking into account the fact that the flight is less than one month away, I would say that most likely it will be more on the empty side, at = or <50%.

beckoa

Welcome to Flyertalk RMO.

As this is specific to EK, we'll move your post to the EK forum.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk

kuroko

Hi and welcome to Flyertalk

X and V class are the lowest classes for LIS-DXB fares (Special fare), as all classes are wide open the flight wont be full (and in my experience wont get full as the forecast has to be low). of course it also depends on the travel date (if this is for Nov16 or only a few months away).

Mwenenzi

A bad assumption.
But as above, with the cheap economy seats at 9 (or more) and business at 7 (or more) a lot of seats still for sale, You will not get an op-up.
F4 A4 J7 C7 I7 O7 P0 Y9 E9 R9 W9 M9 B9 U9 K9 H9 Q9 L9 T9 V9 X9

LondonElite

On EK the chance of an op up is pretty close to zero anyway, and with no status the OP's chance is zero. Even if the flight is wide open, seat assignments (manual or otherwise) make a free row highly unlikely.

skywardhunter

I'm 3 out of 12 on op-ups in the last 7 months so not close to zero.

As for the load on that flight, looks to me like it'll be wide open, best bet is to first select a window with an empty middle and taken aisle, this way you're almost certain to have the middle seat open. Then 36-72 hours before the flight check the seat map for empty rows and if there are plenty change your seat to an aisle in an empty row, but beware as someone could take the other aisle (for center row) or window (for window row).

eternaltransit

I can think of a few stations where, at certain times of the year, even with no status one could get an op-up with no status (e.g. BKK)!

But, the OP should of course never book a flight expecting it - you are more likely than not, going to be disappointed!

RMO

Thank you everyone for your inputs and suggestions.

I selected a window seat for myself and the aisle one for my companion, the middle seat is empty. Hope it stays that way - with so many seats to pick I guess no one will want to seat between two strangers.

Besides overbooking cases, are operational upgrades ever given due to weight and balance of the aircraft on Emirates? I've seen some airlines blocking and assigning seats to passengers when they had like 40 passengers booked on a 100+ capacity A319/320. I guess they did it so the center of gravity wouldn't fall out of the acceptable range during take-off and landing, but I'm not sure.

RMO

Thank you everyone for your input and suggestions.

RMO

Well, I had posted something but it just didn't appear. Anyway, it's just to thank you for your input and suggestions.

I did select a window seat for myself and the aisle one for my travel companion. The middle seat is empty. Hope nobody wants to sit in the middle of two strangers.

NoStressHere

Why do people make postings with so little information. In this case, including the city pairs would help the poster get more answers. How many people know flight numbers off the top of their head?

As to the question... I am often anal about checking seat maps and more than once I have seen flights that appear half empty a few days out eventually being FULL. Just so hard to tell sometimes.