Availablity Help Needed

Ok guys- i need some help here.

I have used the web based availablity tools that are avaliable to me to check the availiablity on TP397 on 17 Mar and returning on TP398 on 27th Mar.

Now I have rung TAP reservations and thye said to me they arent allowed to tell me how many seats are left! Now I am placing a booking for 30 people and being tight students we want the cheapest seats- can anyone tell me from the inforamtion below how quickly i need to book the seats. Taking a wild stab in the dark I would guess there are no N class seats left. But what does the 9 represent in all the other buckets? 9 seats left in each bucket?

Tap Air Portugal 397
Airbus A320 12:20 pm
London, United Kingdom (LHR) 3:00 pm
Faro, Portugal (FAO) C9 D9 Z9 Y9 B9 M9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 O9 L9 S9 E9 K9 U9 N9 non-stop 1064 2:40

Tap Air Portugal 398
Airbus A320 6:25 pm
Faro, Portugal (FAO) 9:05 pm
London, United Kingdom (LHR) C9 D9 Z9 Y9 B9 M9 H9 Q9 V9 W9 O9 L9 S9 E9 K9 U9 N0 non-stop 1064 2:40

AFAIK mainly for security reason, i think it is pretty much impossible to find out if there is more than the bucket limit available. For some carriers this is 9, for most it is 7. I would suggest that perhaps you play around with some online booking engines that generally mark the seats out of action whilst you are making the booking. (But I don't think this works with Expedia)

Paul

Originally posted by p17blo
AFAIK mainly for security reason, i think it is pretty much impossible to find out if there is more than the bucket limit available. For some carriers this is 9, for most it is 7. I would suggest that perhaps you play around with some online booking engines that generally mark the seats out of action whilst you are making the booking. (But I don't think this works with Expedia)

Paul

HAHAHAHAH Security reasons! It is just to protect your business information from competitors

A TA friend of mine told me that you will often see things like F7 A1 and if you book the A another one will pop up a couple of minutes laters, so if you book two tickets in one go you end up having to pay a higher price .

[Scrooge]

give them a call back and ask for group sale's,they will be more than happy to help you.For anything over 8 people airlines want you to go through group sales,makes situations like this a lot easier on both parties.

I was talking to groups sales- and she wouldnt tell me how many seats were left- she basically said you need to book now. I find this rather annoying b/c she is prob saying that so they get 30 seats then again she maybe saying it b/c there are only 40 seats left on the plane!

Odd as everytime i ring FC they are always happy to say there are 10 seats left or whatever.

Back to my main question- from the info i found can i tell how many seats are left? Ie: do i need to book now?

[Decker]

From the info you found - no. The seat maps never give more than the max defined as "showable" for a class. The highest number (9 here) includes the lower numbers in the same class. You can't add all numbers in the same class together I'm afraid.