Class Availability
 

I am new to FlyerTalk. Have gotten a lot of information from the site.

I can get the CLASS AVAILABILITY, is there a way to know how full is the flight?

Am I right to say that P9 F9 Y9 B9 M9 H9 Q9 V9 L9 T9 K9 is pretty empty.

How emtpy is empty?
Why is 9 the maximum number? I suppose there could be more than 9 seats for each class.

Thanks.

That is really empty. You are right that there are likely more than 9 seats in each available class. May I ask what tool you are using to check availability? I was using KVS until it could no longer check Worldspan and have been actively searching for something different.

I think of it this way: 9 is the largest single digit. Makes for an easy interface. How empty??? Depends on how many "seats" are avialable. On some flight a greater number of seats are sold than actual seats on the plane. It's called yield management. Also, a H fare may show up but you may not be able to purchase it unless you meet all the fare requirements.

humanoid94,
Check out Class availability tool.

Travel and Transport works as well. Create a login and change your mode to expert.

fromXYU, thanks a bunch for the links!

Availability is NOT cumulative. P9 F9 Y9 B9 M9 H9 Q9 V9 L9 T9 K9 means "at least 9 seats available for sale in first and at least 9 seats available for sale in coach," not 18 and 81, respectively. It also isn't an indication of how many seats are unreserved on the plane, but is an indication of how many they're willing to sell. A flight could in theory be completely "full," but NW decides they want to sell 9 more seats (i.e., oversell the flight by 9, because they think there will be at least 9 no-shows), so they leave it at 9's across the board.

That said, usually when a flight is all-9's across the board, it means it's pretty empty. If they're in overselling-mode, usually only Y, maybe B or M, will be available, since they usually only want to oversell if it means bringing in significantly more revenue than they'd potentially have to pay out in bump compensation.

I'm not sure why 9 is the limit. Most airlines seem to limit availability to 9, with AA as the notable exception (their availability numbers top out at 7).

There are a number of reasons: 1. The screen space on a computer terminal 30 years ago was quite limited, so the display had to be compact. 2. A booking with over 9 seats would be considered a group sale, which cannot be booked via normal channels, so the standard availability display would not be used anyway.

Ever wondered why the snooze button on your alarm clock only gives you 9 minutes?!?!

Yes, and if anyone knows the answer to this please post it!

BTW, there are lots of airlines that restrict class availability to numbers other than 9... I've seen both KL and MH display only up to 4 or 7, but it seems to change with booking tool and over the years as well. Sometimes codeshares affect the max number as well.

KVS is right about the computers... especially back in the good ole days when mainframes took up entire buildings, each byte was sacred so keeping the max at 9 probably helped as well when transmitting availability between servers.

My snooze button's default is 8 minutes, but it's programmable (I have it set at 7 minutes). This is on a 14-year-old Panasonic clock radio.

humanoid94, I used the first tool on fromYXU's list. Will try the second approach soon.

themicah, thanks for the information. Looks like this is what you mentioned as "oversell" J0 C0 Z0 I0 Y9 B9 M9 H0 Q0 V0 L0 T0 K0!

Bottom line is there is no way to tell if the plane is quarter, half or three-quarter ... full from the class availability chart.

Not necessarily. Looks like WBC is full (they rarely oversell WBC) and coach could either be oversold, or they might have simply done some predictions and decided they can sell enough M-or-higher tickets to fill the rest of coach.

The only way to know for sure if a flight is oversold is to call and ask. They are required to tell you if it's oversold, and some agents will even share the number by which it's oversold (though they're not required to do that). In the last couple years, NW has improved its yield management predictions tremendously (i.e., they're pretty good at guessing the number of no-shows), so even if a flight is oversold by 5-10, they might not need any bump volunteers.