Indeed; with AC, C is a lower class of business than J.

The Alphabetic characters represent "fare bucket" codes and the numbers adjacent to each represent the minimum number of seats in that fare bucket an airline is prepared to sell for a particular flight at the time of query and its specific parameters/attributesº. For example, same day AC124 has:

J8 C8 D7 Z0 P0 R0 Y9 B9 M9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T9 L9 K0 G0

Business bucket availability J8 C8 D7 Z0 does not mean that there are 23 seats available. It indicates AC are willing to sell up to 8 seats in the Business cabin. This at either the full rate for J or discounted C rate. However, they are only willing to sell up to 7 seats at the more discounted D rate. None are available for Z. What would normally happen if someone booked a single Business seat on the flight is that most numbers would reduce, i.e. it goes to J7 C7 D6.

Also note, the maximum returned by AC for such queries is 9. So J9 would mean there are at least 9 seats available to be sold but there may be more. On the other hand, J8 would indicate there are only 8 seats available for sale.

º Parameters/Attributes can include aspects such as total route, point of sale, stopover/transit, selling entity, etc.

On AA this was fixed a couple of weeks ago. For the rest of the airlines including BA we are still working with our GDS partner on implementing a fix. Unfortunately we don't have an ETA yet but will share as soon as we have one.

To everyone, you can view your BA seats within 24 hours of departure on the Sri Lankan site but ONLY if you have a valid BA booking reference. I did mention this to EF and they asked for more information, which I sent (with a follow-up reminder) but I’ve heard nothing back since my last message was sent on the 24th. I hope this is useful for everyone - I was able to check seats even after I’d boarded. I tried all OW carriers but Sri Lankan was the only site that worked.

In addition to Etihad still showing blocked seats as occupied, I am now starting to see inaccuracies with the "Flight Availability" searches. Example: ExpertFlyer shows four options.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...cccc75459a.jpg

American shows 8 options. These first two are missing from the EF results.


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...5036d5dd22.jpg

Just that we're extremely clear about it: this number does include overbookings.

For instance: if you'd see an available inventory of 8, but the seatmap only shows 5 available seats (available & blocked included), then this means that this flight will most likely be overbooked by 3 seats.
(That's why several airlines remove the ability to display seatmaps closer to departure)

Another point to note: when searching for YVR to YYZ AC34 could show a different inventory compared to when searching e.g. for SYD-YVR-YYZ.
It can be that for YVR-YYZ nothing or only 3 seats would be made available for AC34, whereas e.g. for SYD-YVR-YYZ, AC34 they would still want to sell e.g. 7 seats.

Or, as it just happened last week when I booked something with TP:

Prior to my booking C6D4Z0J0
After my booking: C5D0Z0J0

Which made the impression to me that they kept D open in case a family or alike would book, but only wanted to accept one more booking before closing this fare bucket.

Thank you for the very helpful explanation!

Fare Routing for EY is not showing e.g. HKG-LIS
This is what returned:
"FARE BASIS NOT FOUND FOR CITYPAIR/DATE‡ ."

Expert flyer better than before but still buggy
 

For ages I couldn't search any seat maps on QR so I tried Award Flights but I think it's really expensive
Tried EF last week seems much improved but I can only search maps that has more than 24 hours before departure so pretty useless for same day or next day departure


Their pricing has changed the premium is only available with annual billing I'm sure this has been posted before so apologies in advance

Seat maps are down again for BA, irrespective of date. EF, when will this be resolved please - presumably not today given it’s Labor Day?

Hello everyone and EF.

I’ve found a workaround to today’s new problem of not being able to view BA seats on flights more than 24 hours ahead (flights within 24 hours can still be viewed on Sri Lankan’s site as long as you have an active booking reference).

Instead of trying to access the seat map from the flight availability page, simply go to create seat alert and the seat map will be delivered.

Also, if you’re trying to set a seat alert for a specific seat but nothing happens when you click the seat as I’m finding now and then, keep clicking the seat and it (they) will eventually stick although I’ve found I need to select I have preferred status and I can reserve blocked seats in order to make this work.

Meanwhile and here’s another issue for EF, I’m trying to create 3 separate flight schedule change alerts for 21 Aug 2026. I can do this for 2 of them and they appear to stick but when I go in and add the third, it wipes out the previous 2 and won’t save itself either (I have more than enough free alerts remaining). Also, if I logout and log back in, the perceived saved alerts have disappeared and now show as notified and my inbox is full of schedule change notifications with no actual changes. This used to be an issue if, for example, the date of the alert creation was 31 Aug 2025 and the flight was 21 Aug 2026 as the system couldn’t cope with 13 months but waiting until the gap reduced to 12 months used to fix it - in other words, creating an alert for 21 Aug 2026 on 1 Sep 2025. Unfortunately, this seems to be broken now? I’ll try again tomorrow. (By the way, this issue doesn’t affect setting seat alerts or aircraft change alerts so whatever switch hasn’t been selected for these 2 needs to be deselected for the schedule change alerts).

Something broken today, or merely down for maintenance?

It's been a while since I've done airfare searches
it is showing a list of fares between point A and point B
But fare rules do not show (just a blank screen)
Routing rules do not show either

???

ETA. All seems OK now

To clarify Premium is still available as a Monthly option for $9.99. You can select Annual or Monthly payment as you go through the checkout flow

Can you DM the flight details for your search? I'm able to see BA seat maps (for flights that are not departing in the next 24 hours). Hadn't seen the 3rd alert issue you mention here. Will investigate.


This should be working. Will send you a DM for more details.

The historical fares do not seem to be working, I am getting current fares even though I selected a ticketing date in the past before a fare change.

Hi ranskis - Sending you a DM for more details.