4 ms·

Is there some sort of service that identifies these planned-to-be-nearly-empty flights so that you can book them? I would absolutely love to be on a near-empty

Is there some sort of service that identifies these planned-to-be-nearly-empty flights so that you can book them? I would absolutely love to be on a near-empty flight instead of a congested flight, and my schedule is such that I can fly out at more or less whichever time of day I want, so this would be extremely beneficial to me. Or failing a dedicated service for this, is there at least a manual way of finding out which flights are going to be near-empty?

feupan 5y ago
I don’t think this kind of data is known outside the airline. As far as I know public data is limited to available tickets and classes on a specific path.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  If available ticket data is available, isn't that sufficient to map something like this? I'm just thinking outloud, but something which queries a ticket broker for a large number of tickets for each flight, and if the return is consistently that more than n% of tickets are available, the flight gets added as low-book.
- 19h 5y ago
  This data definitely is available via GDS like Amadeus and Sabre.
sokoloff 5y ago
If the airline offers seat selection while booking, you could just look at the seat map.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > If the airline offers seat selection while booking Which airlines do this? I genuinely think I've never seen the option to select seats while booking.
  - cryvate1284 5y ago
    EasyJet
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Delta, United, Jet Blue, probably American… I’m annoyed on the relatively few trips where the carrier doesn’t allow this.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jmspring 5y ago
    Most do. A number of european airlines require an extra fee to prebook a seat, but at least a year ago, many had maps available.
    - noahtallen 5y ago
      Most US Airlines also charge you extra to select a seat on the cheapest fare level. At least American and Delta along with Spirit and Frontier. If you choose to pay that fee during booking, you can normally select a seat then.
      - Dma54rhs 5y ago
        At least with the European ones I've travelled let you see the selection first, then nag for money. So answer to parent poster would be that's one option, but it's a hassle since you have to fill in a lot of forms before the payment stage where you can see the seat selection.
  - kmlx 5y ago
    > Which airlines do this? almost all non-low-cost airlines do this. BA, Iberia, Lufthansa, Air France, United, Delta, Avianca etc etc etc
acrooks 5y ago
You can use expertflyer.com, and go check Flight Availability for a particular route. Within a route, it will suggest all the different options to get there. You can judge at a glance how much availability there is by looking at the available seats in the fare buckets. This is for an arbitrary flight from YVR to LHR on Air Canada: J9 C9 D9 Z9 P9 R0 O8 E7 N3 Y9 B9 M9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T9 L9 K9 F0 An airline splits its seats into different “buckets”, and the list above is essentially ordered from most to least expensive. J, C, D, Z, P are for business class seats. O, E, N for premium economy, and Y and beyond for economy. J9 means that there are at least 9 tickets available in the most expensive business class bucket. N3 means that there are exactly 3 tickets available in the least expensive premium economy bucket. Industry-wide, J means business class and Y means economy, but individual airlines tend to have their own fare coding within there. So with all of those nuances in mind, you can infer how full the flight is: the second least expensive business class bucket has at least 9 seats available, and the lowest one has 0, so it’s pretty quiet but not empty. Premium economy is probably 50% full. And economy seems to have a lot of space (all but the cheapest bucket have more than 9 tickets). Conversely, this is a sample of a fairly full flight (today on AC, YVR-YYZ): J0 C0 D0 Z0 P0 R0 O2 E1 N0 Y4 B8 M6 U6 H5 Q3 V2 W2 G1 S0 T0 L0 A0 K0 F0 Expert Flyer also allows you to review the seat maps for each flight you see, but of course it’s more time consuming, because then you need to click into each option. So it’s best to learn the above syntax, and then use the seat maps to validate. It’s also worth noting that the seat maps aren’t foolproof: many passengers don’t select seats until they check in (because it costs $ otherwise). Looking at the seat map for my first example above, I was able to validate that business class had 14/30 seats selected, premium economy had 12/21, and economy had ~70/~240 seats selected - lots of open space. A really good chance of having a whole block of seats to yourself. Also another interesting fact: sometimes you’ll see something like Y3 but the flight is actually sold out. This is how airlines oversell their flights. Y is the most expensive economy fare, often not too far off from a cheap business class ticket - so it’s super profitable. So the airlines will generally keep a couple extra seats available for booking on a full flight. In the best case, a few people miss connections and they’ve pocketed all of that extra money. In the worst case, they need to bump one of the lowest paying passengers and pay them off. But the payoff doesn’t cost the airline much, if anything at all, because then having to do so meant that somebody bought a super expensive ticket in their place.

feupan 5y ago

I don’t think this kind of data is known outside the airline. As far as I know public data is limited to available tickets and classes on a specific path.

Ansil849 5y ago
If available ticket data is available, isn't that sufficient to map something like this? I'm just thinking outloud, but something which queries a ticket broker for a large number of tickets for each flight, and if the return is consistently that more than n% of tickets are available, the flight gets added as low-book.
19h 5y ago
This data definitely is available via GDS like Amadeus and Sabre.

sokoloff 5y ago

If the airline offers seat selection while booking, you could just look at the seat map.

Ansil849 5y ago
> If the airline offers seat selection while booking Which airlines do this? I genuinely think I've never seen the option to select seats while booking.
- cryvate1284 5y ago
  EasyJet
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Delta, United, Jet Blue, probably American… I’m annoyed on the relatively few trips where the carrier doesn’t allow this.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jmspring 5y ago
  Most do. A number of european airlines require an extra fee to prebook a seat, but at least a year ago, many had maps available.
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    Most US Airlines also charge you extra to select a seat on the cheapest fare level. At least American and Delta along with Spirit and Frontier. If you choose to pay that fee during booking, you can normally select a seat then.
    - Dma54rhs 5y ago
      At least with the European ones I've travelled let you see the selection first, then nag for money. So answer to parent poster would be that's one option, but it's a hassle since you have to fill in a lot of forms before the payment stage where you can see the seat selection.
- kmlx 5y ago
  > Which airlines do this? almost all non-low-cost airlines do this. BA, Iberia, Lufthansa, Air France, United, Delta, Avianca etc etc etc

acrooks 5y ago

You can use expertflyer.com, and go check Flight Availability for a particular route. Within a route, it will suggest all the different options to get there. You can judge at a glance how much availability there is by looking at the available seats in the fare buckets. This is for an arbitrary flight from YVR to LHR on Air Canada: J9 C9 D9 Z9 P9 R0 O8 E7 N3 Y9 B9 M9 U9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 S9 T9 L9 K9 F0 An airline splits its seats into different “buckets”, and the list above is essentially ordered from most to least expensive. J, C, D, Z, P are for business class seats. O, E, N for premium economy, and Y and beyond for economy. J9 means that there are at least 9 tickets available in the most expensive business class bucket. N3 means that there are exactly 3 tickets available in the least expensive premium economy bucket. Industry-wide, J means business class and Y means economy, but individual airlines tend to have their own fare coding within there. So with all of those nuances in mind, you can infer how full the flight is: the second least expensive business class bucket has at least 9 seats available, and the lowest one has 0, so it’s pretty quiet but not empty. Premium economy is probably 50% full. And economy seems to have a lot of space (all but the cheapest bucket have more than 9 tickets). Conversely, this is a sample of a fairly full flight (today on AC, YVR-YYZ): J0 C0 D0 Z0 P0 R0 O2 E1 N0 Y4 B8 M6 U6 H5 Q3 V2 W2 G1 S0 T0 L0 A0 K0 F0 Expert Flyer also allows you to review the seat maps for each flight you see, but of course it’s more time consuming, because then you need to click into each option. So it’s best to learn the above syntax, and then use the seat maps to validate. It’s also worth noting that the seat maps aren’t foolproof: many passengers don’t select seats until they check in (because it costs $ otherwise). Looking at the seat map for my first example above, I was able to validate that business class had 14/30 seats selected, premium economy had 12/21, and economy had ~70/~240 seats selected - lots of open space. A really good chance of having a whole block of seats to yourself. Also another interesting fact: sometimes you’ll see something like Y3 but the flight is actually sold out. This is how airlines oversell their flights. Y is the most expensive economy fare, often not too far off from a cheap business class ticket - so it’s super profitable. So the airlines will generally keep a couple extra seats available for booking on a full flight. In the best case, a few people miss connections and they’ve pocketed all of that extra money. In the worst case, they need to bump one of the lowest paying passengers and pay them off. But the payoff doesn’t cost the airline much, if anything at all, because then having to do so meant that somebody bought a super expensive ticket in their place.