Gabrca

I have a DOH-PVG flight coming up in a couple of weeks and the seat map looks completely empty. I know on certain airlines (ie BA) which charge for seat reservations, the map is never a good indicator, but was just wondering, overall, how good of an indicator the seat map on Qatar is for flight loads?

Right now I'm booked into the front of the first economy cabin, but if it does turn out to probably be a light load, I may move myself more towards the back to try and grab my own 3-seat row.

On expert flyer the available classes look as follows (which hopefully confirms the above):

J4 C3 D2 I0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 T9 O9

Thanks all!

Saltire74

Hi Acrbag

My own personal experience is that it is not very indicative of the flight load. I was always under the impression that everyone got the chance to select seats at booking on QR. As I have travelled Y both to and from PEK, I had kept an eye on the seatmap. All the way up until OLCI opened, the seatmap looked fairly open and asking some advice on here gave load availability numbers similar to the ones you have found yourself.

Once boarding was completed, both flights were fairly fully with a smattering of spare seats available around the Y cabin. You can always take the chance of trying to get a row to yourself down the back which seems to give a better chance as people prefer to sit further forward but is not guaranteed.

On both of my outward flights (EDI-DOH-PEK) QR blocked the seat next to me which gave me a bit of extra room. When I selected my seats for the return, up until a few weeks before my PEK-DOH flight, the seat next to me appeared blocked (or so I thought and this was a middle seat with the aisle available). Thanks to someone on this forum who had better ability than me to check, the seat next to me actually had someone in it. Why they had selected a middle seat of that I am not too sure. So i duly moved to try and get a spare seat next to me given that the seatmap showed lots of availability.

In the end I got an aisle bulkhead seat which gave me plenty of leg room and as said, once boarding was completed, there was hardly a spare seat in the cabin.

Good luck on your seat assignments.

Safe & Happy Travels

S

purple1addict

Yep, Saltire74's experience matches mine - the seatmap will often look almost empty until a few hours before departure when they seem to start assigning seats to those who haven't pre-selected. So the seatmap is not a reliable indicator at all until the very last minute I'm afraid!

Saltire74

And it was yourself purple1addict that advised me that someone must have p!553d off their TA in this thread . Thanks again for the warning...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/qatar...d-seats-y.html

Safe & Happy Travels

S

TheDinge

In some countries people tend to book their ticket through an agent who has no responsibility to assign you a good seat. What they do is just to sell you a ticket and the travelers have no idea that they can book their seats online.

Gabrca

Thanks for the thorough answer! This was my background suspicion to begin with. Happened to me once on an aeroflot flight, completely empty seat map, then completely full plane.

Just one more follow-up, how did you get QR to block the seat next to you, at checkin?

Best,

Acrbag

Saltire74

Hi Acrbag

I was OWE at the time and there were one or two confirmations on here that said QR were sometimes proactively blocking seats next to OWE where the loads allowed. It might just be the luck on the day. I don't know if that extends to OWS also.

Best of luck.

S

purple1addict

Haha - welcome! ^