Load Check for Dummies

I see people ask for these quite often.

Can someone in the know tell me:

Where do you get them from?

How do you decipher them (I have a rough idea, I know the fare buckets, but unsure what the numbers infer exactly)?

Are they accurate?

I could not find a clear answer online.

Sites like expert flyer do them

They basically give an indication about how many seats an airline is prepared to sell on a particular flight not how many seats are free. And remember they can and do oversell some flights.

The numbers are generally accurate but if it says e.g. J9 it means they are prepared to sell 9 or more seats.

Taking this example from another post

J5 C5 D5 I0 Z0 W9 S9 K9 Y3 B3 R3 L3 U0 M0 E0 Q0 X0 N0 O0

It means they are prepared to sell 5 seats in Business, 9+ in premium economy (W9) and 3 in Economy (Y3)

The letters refer to the individual fare buckets within the cabin

so J5, C5, D5 means they will sell 5 more seats but in any of those fare buckets but not any I or Z bucket fares. You do not add the numbers up and get 15.

If it read e.g. J5, C3, D1 it means they are prepared to sell 5 in the J bucket but only 1 in D.

Many thanks!

[buns]

Maximus

To add to the excellent reply already given by tontybear, paid for sites such as Expert Flyer get their feed from the Global Airline Ticketing systems 9such as Sabre) and as such are extremely accurate on a real time basis.

For example, when I have booked on the phone with Virgin, I have seen the seat map alter as soon as the agent has pre allocated the seat(s)

buns

Just a general query re the Expert flyer website and any advice would be welcome please.

I've noticed over the years people on the forum often request a 'load checks' and think I remember seeing that this info is gathered from the ExpertFlyer site?

I was wondering how accurate their information actually is.
Reason being, I am hoping to book a couple of m fares which I then want to upgrade to G fares using miles. We hope to travel around March 10th or 11th for two weeks (LGW)

I logged onto Expert Flyer and firstly on both the outbound flights I checked and on both the inbound ones too, there are M9 fares available and then I looked at the seat map for the entire flight and nothing is 'booked' (requested) not even in economy Does that sound right perhaps because March is so far away and also not a peak time.

Any thoughts?

There was a thread yesterday about this

please accept my humble apologies, I actually missed the thread by started by Maximus, which does answer my most of of query.

[Nottingham Nick]

Given the similar nature of the two threads, I have merged them - so that hopefully, the rest of Hev60's questions can be answered and if can be used as a reference thread in the future.

Nick

ii) please accept my humble apologies, I actually missed the thread by started by Maximus, which does answer my most of of query.

Hev60 so sorry but i was on my phone when I posted the reply so didn't mean it to sound quite so stern !

What I would say is that the load check data is accurate but seat maps aren't as only a few people are bothered about selecting seats in advance