Availability vs. Seatmap
 

This Friday the 15th is a monster travel day out of Boston. Almost every flight on every airline is showing zero availability.

I'm on the 4:10pm BOS-DTW. It's zeroed out on Carlson-Wagonlit's availability tool. However, when I look on NWA.com, the seat map shows almost 30 open seats. Other BOS-DTW that afternoon are similar. I know seats are not always assigned at booking, but 30 seats seems like a lot for a "zeroed out" flight.

Any insight?

RFD,
GA

Saw the same situation MCO-DTW on 4/22. Everything is zeroed out (most of the day including F) on the availability tool but 3/4 of the premium seats are still available (at least on the last non-stop that day). Perhaps these are group trip bookings? Hoping for a battlefiled PL upgrade at this point :rolleyes: :

Not everybody has an assigned seat. Often, available seats on the map are taken leaving exit rows and preferred seating as the only open option. Non-elites can not pre-select these seats.

Many sites/agents don't pre-assign seats by default. Consolidators, as well, often don't do this.

I've seen massively oversold (and zeroed out) flights appear empty on the seatmap. If inventory is zeroed out, that means they're not willing to sell any more seats, which is a pretty solid indication they're over, as they're turning away any potential business on this flight.

Almost certain the flight is gong to be full. Same situation a few days ago and they were asking for volunteers at the gate.

Seatmaps show assigned seats, not sold seats.