BLADE

Not sure if this is a new subject or a rehash of an old thread, but here it is anyway.

I was playing around the ITN (internet travel agency) web site when I discovered you can get access to the available seat listings for specific flights WITHOUT actually purchasing a ticket.

I am flying to LAS tomorrow morning on AA. Simply by configuring the flight search to come up with my flights I was led to a screen that askes you to "select seats." This screen shows all seats available in the portion of the cabin for the fair you selected on the previous screens. This is before purchase of the ticket.

The upshot is a real time look at how many and which seats are available to the ITN booking system (Appolo?). While I have not tried it with other airlines yet, no reason to believe it will not work.

One word of warning. If you are going to try this DO NOT put a credit card number in your profile. While you will have to click the "purchase ticket" button for it to be charged versus the "Cancel" button, you want to ensure no charges resulting from inadvertant clicking.

BTW, you obviously have to join ITN. The membership is free, with no spam I am aware of.

------------------
__________________________________________
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three lefts do.

JIMBOLIGUY

You can do the same thing on Travelocity. You set up your travel and "purchase" a ticket. The seat maps pop up before you have to finalize your purchase -- so as soon as you see your map, cancel the flight selection. I have been doing it for months and no problems. (Of course, even if I did accidently purchase the ticket, the seat maps I am looking at are either FC or business -- both of which are fully refundable.

--Jim

essxjay

ITN's seat mapper is pretty close to real-time. I booked a ticket yesterday at the UA CTO, then decided to change my seats. I first checked to see what was available by going to ITN before calling UA customer service. Two hours later I checked ITN's seat mapper just out of curiousity and my old seats showed as available. I was impressed.

Samantha

C. Neil

Blade: The address of ITN, please

------------------

BlondeBomber

http://www.itn.com

Remember to set your customer info to expert mode! so you can also see fare class availability.

Punki

Thanks, this is a good site.

I am not sure, however, that $2,060.00 is such a smoking deal for a coach seat from SEA/IAD. (I thought they paid you extra to fly into Dulles?)

Eastbay1K

Well, everyone's intended logic here was a good effort, but fails to take into account that many F reservations do not have seat assignments at the time of booking, so while you may see a flight with 10 F seats available for assignment, there may only be 2 available for sale/upgrade. But I'm sure the seatmaps are actual live maps right off Apollo or whatever applicable system.

Jim_B

I spoke to a United employee about this once. I had one of those very rare intl upgrade coupons, and checked ITN before going to the airport. It showed business as about 2/3 full, and I figured I was set. At check-in, I was advised that I was waitlisted for business. I told them what I had seen, and they told me their system showed only one C class seat. According to him, what ITN shows (which is pulled off Apollo) is availability to sell a ticket, which may not correspond to actual seat availability. Made sense to me.

I did end up in Business, so all's well that ends well

Andrew Yiu

I am still searching for a site which allows you to search for a specific class on a flight, easysabre allows us to do this. Cause upgrade class are not published, however, if you search for it, it will show up.

Regards,
Empress

jet

What Jim_B said is right. On several occasions, I've been told by UA folks that what you can see on the reservations screens (Apollo and Sabre, for example) are not the physical seats themselves. So while looking at them give you a general look at the flight, it by no means reflects reality in the way that we'd all like it to... On the other hand, sometimes a full-looking flight isn't as full as it looks because the airlines block off certain seats for assignment at the airport, and also elite level seating, etc...