Is there some way of know how full a flight is?
You can get a feel of how busy a flight is by searching for 9 seats and seeing what fares are offered.
However most booking engines only allow you to check a maximum of 9 seats per flight - and that can mean 9 seats left or 199 seats!
Expert Flyer displays availability by fare bucket - but again up to a maximum of 9 seats, therefore when you see figures below that you can estimate that the flight is getting busy.