hightide

Have flights QR 959 CGK-DOH departing 1:10am followed by QR 149 DOH-MAD departing 7:50am departing on a Saturday in October.
How full are these 2 flights recently?

ETA: In the Economy cabins

IAN-UK

recently won't tell you much about October. Currently QR seems to be doing pretty well at filling seats. Reading this forum might suggest that only the business-class cabin is are used, but I've travelled in fair number of QR's economy seats recently and the cabins were chokka. Who knows if this will continue through and after the summer.

If you are intent on monitoring capacity on your flight, forget the QR seat-map: that tends to get flooded in the day before the flight as the airline allocates bums to seats. ExpertFlyer is a little more useful as it gives an indication of the capacity available by fare class. Maybe that gives some geeky satisfaction over the weeks before your flight ... until you are faced with a full plane at check-in

Probably the mosst useful strategy is to select the best seats your status and pocket allow and then forget about it. There's nothing much more you can do. Best not to attempt to engineer an empty seat between two reserved seats (etc) as that can backfire.

hightide

Thanks for your input. I checked again and my first flight is actually QR 955. I'm travelling alone and just hoping for an empty middle seat for QR 955 - current seat 17K. On QR 149 in 17F. I am second guessing myself wondering whether I'm less likely to get an empty middle towards the front.

SilverChris

There's no use in trying to predict your chances so far in advance. A flight can be seemingly empty (through the inventory and seat map) even 1-2 days out and still depart without a seat to spare.

The only way to guarantee an empty seat beside you is to purchase a designated extra seat. Otherwise, it'll come down to sheer luck. I know there are TikTok videos of "hacks" to score an empty seat, but at the end of the day, it's a luck of draw. Purchasing one seat and hoping for two is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

IAN-UK

On the day you might try asking the gate agent if you have an empty seat next to you: it's always good to get certainty before the event. If you haven't struck lucky, your charm might persuade the agent search out any available empty pair of seats.

BobFF68

QR957 Y and QR958 J were both packed last June. In addition to what other posters already mentioned let’s not forget that all flights to/from ME (plus IST) and CGK also accommodate a big chunk of Haj/Umrah pilgrims almost all year round which TA never book/choose seats in advance. The only period I can remember CGK QR flights to be quite empty was during Qatar/Saudi embargo.