Give Me A Tutorial on Seatcounter.com
 

This may have been asked before and if it has I apologize.

I just don't seem to be able to get my brain around seatcounter.com.

Would anyone be so kind as to explain how it works?

Thank you very much. Today my brain is fried.

I will use my next flight as an example.

<i>American 68 767-300/ER MIA/182 MAD/85 7 6 7 7 3 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7</i>

This is a 2 class plane, business and economy.

What the seat counter shows is that the flight is wide open at the moment but it does NOT show an accurate seat count. AA, at this time is willing to sell <b>at least</b> 7 J seats and 7 Y seats, but that does not mean it ONLY has 7 seats in either cabin for sale. The GDS is limited to displaying 7 so that's why it's showing only 7 but there could be 50 seats still available for purchase.

Each fare code in each class seems to be still available for that particular flight, which means that it's still possible to get one of the lowest fares although the flight is less then 2 weeks away.

So, if it's 7 S fares and 7 G fares and 7 Y fares, it does not mean that 21 seats in economy are available. If 2 Y fares were sold at the moment, it's possible that the other fares would go down to 5, but again, it's possible, not necessarily a guarantee.

Basically, if you see sevens across the board = the flight is wide open, but if you see more zeroes than sevens the flight is getting close to being sold out or oversold. If it's zeoroes all across the board the flight IS sold out/oversold.

And you need to understand what fare classes are first, if you don't already.

Thank you that is a big help.

I know that you must book a certain fare class for upgrades. And I know that certain fare classes have more restrictions, thus the difference in prices? Is that close?

I never upgrade. I guess I just find a fare I like and book it. And that is usually the most restricted fare. Do different airlines assign the same letter class to the same category of fares?

But I don't seem to be able to understand how you tell if ff miles are available.

I am trying to find something with miles to get me to Nice from New York/return. I entered the same airline twice and then drew a blank to understand if seats were available.

So, I asked you guys for help.

Each airline uses different letters for their fare classes. Usually J or C are full fare business, and Y is full fare coach, but other letters all different.

To know whether a fare can earn miles, you need to know the fare code from the airline or from whoever you're booking from. Some make it easy, some don't. Often you need to click to see &quot;penalties and change policies&quot; or something like that to reveal the booking class. It may be something like &quot;B33ERS8&quot;. The first letter is the booking class, which is &quot;B&quot;.

Then you go look up the website of your FF program and see if that particular fare class on that particular ticket will earn you FF miles and/or elite qualifying miles.

<i>I am trying to find something with miles to get me to Nice from New York/return. I entered the same airline twice and then drew a blank to understand if seats were available.</i>

Sites like Seatcounter almost never show award inventory - it's a &quot;hidden&quot; fare class only visible to airline people or - depending on airline - to subscribers to a couple of paid services. And the inventory changes all the time - literally day to day or hour to hour, depending on demand for paid seats.

When do you want to go, what class (economy, business?) and what airline are your miles with?

Oh, yeah, if you're trying to find award inventory, you won't find it on seatcounter.com.

I want to go to Nice in July, around the 12th and stay two weeks. I can be flexible.

I can use miles on Continental.

I know that at this time miles are at a premium level.

I must of misunderstood and thought that it would be realitively easy to find out if there were seats availble using the site.

My next post is probably going to be help needing routing maybe to Paris or LON and a low cost carrier from there.

Thanks

I see quite a lot of standard awards from EWR to NCE on continental.com for July, including 7/11 and 7/13.

There is no standard award for coming back. You should call CO's Onepass desk and have them check partner awards for coming back.

You can also search for Skyteam partner flights using Northwest's Japan site. They have a nice calendar feature that will show most partner's inventory. I don't see anything for coming back in late July.

asiares.nwa.com

So, you may have to spend double the miles for a Easypass award for the return trip, or there may be standard business class award for coming back 7/24, according to the NW site.

Sorry, that's assuming you're leaving from EWR. Availability may be different from other markets.

Thanks rkkwan.
EWR is fine with me.

I already am planning trips to Mexico in April and Portugal in May but the opportunity for this trip in July came up.

Needless to say since I am not independently wealthy, I am trying to get there as cheaply as possible.

For peak summer travel, spending 75,000 miles on the ticket isn't that bad of a deal. Right now, the cheapest fare for around those dates is close to $1,200. Should come down a bit, but probably not that much.

If you do decide to get the standard/easypass mix award, make sure you check with Continental again later on. They may have standard economy or standard Business First for the dates coming back.

Or like I said, there may be standard economy partner seats coming back on 7/24. So, that'll be just 50,000miles total if they can find it.

I really didn't think about having them look and change the rewards used but that would be great.

I really am surprised that there is even any availibility for the first part of the trip at the standard level.