Understanding Load Check

Hi,

I'm flying on VS9 tomorrow, and according to the availability section of the Flight Stats site, Coach has the following load:

W/7 S/7 K/7 Y/7 B/7 L/7 M/7 Q/7 X/7 N/7 O/7

I'm not too sure I understand the load indicator: does the above mean that there are exactly 7 seats for each of the economy/premium econ fare classes? Thus, does it mean there are exactly 77 free seats in economy/premium econ.

Flight Stats says, in the summary statistics section, that: "Seats: 7 (at least)", but if there were more wouldn't it go up to 8 or 9?

Maybe the Flight Stats load tool is not accurate? I'd love to get an idea of how busy the flight is going to be. Many thanks!

[Neil]

Have a look in the fare codes section on here, there is a detailed explanation of what the figures mean. Just bear in mind that the explanation is based on Expert Flyer that shows a maximum of 9, where as the site you used shows a maximum of 7.

Thanks,
Neil

It means 7 or more tickets (not necessarily seats) available in that cabin are sale at the current moment in time.

Some other load check sites use 9 in which case it is 9 or more.

But to add to the complications W/S/K are all PE but there are still only 7 tickets available not 21 (3*7).

EG it might be 7/5/3 which means VS can sell 7 tickets of which only 3 will be in the K bucket. If those 3 are sold then it would change to 4/2/0


I am somewhat sceptical when people see a row of 7s (or 9s) and say the flight is 'empty' or 'wide open' as the 7 can mean 7, 8 or 50 tickets are available.

Thanks for the replies. I think I better understand the situation, now. Basically, all we can say from the above is that there are at least 7 free seats in econ/premium econ on the flight.

Cheers.

[Neil]

Thanks for the replies. I think I better understand the situation, now. Basically, all we can say from the above is that there are at least 7 free seats in econ/premium econ on the flight.

Cheers.

Pretty much, but it is fair to say if the lower fare buckets have the max number showing, then the flight isn't likely to be that full currently.

the explanation is based on Expert Flyer that shows a maximum of 9, where as the site you used shows a maximum of 7.

Flight Stats actually shows a max of 9 for VS and the availability is currently straight 9s, not sure where the 7s have come from:

LHR London Heathrow UK [EGLL]
JFK New York John F Kennedy Intl NY US [KJFK]
WED 07 Sep 2011

Carrier Flight From Depart To Arrive A/C St Availability
--------- ------ ---- -------- ---- -------- --- -- --------------------------------------------
VS 9 LHR 17:15 JFK 20:10 346 J9 D9 I9 Z9 W9 S9 K9 Y9 B9 L9 M9 Q9 X9 N9 O9


Acoustic -- the seat maps for PE/Economy have a lot of unassigned seats. That doesn't necessarily tell you the load, but combined with the straight 9s in the availability check I reckon you'll find there are some spare seats tomorrow.