Flight Availability v Seat Map

Thinking of changing my flight from PE to UC but confused by how many seats are still available.
LGW-MCO 01/11/06 VS027: Expertflyer.com Flight Availability shows: D5,J5,Z2 but the seat map says the only empty seat is 8K, how can this be?

-Steve

[Bazz]

Not all seats are available for pre-allocation. Airlines tend to keep (are required?) back a percentage to allocate at checkin to ensure families have a chance of sitting together and also some restricted seat are withheld, emergency exits and some bulkheads.

Seats 11 & 12 A&K are always 'greyed out' on the seat map as they are not available for pre booking

[Neil]

Further to what Bazz has already said, it is 60% of seats that are made available for pre-selection, and this will be the reason why you think there are difference. The rest of the seats will become available at OLCI stage.

Neil:)

[preiffer]

Also remember that available TICKETS is not always the same as number of available SEATS. (Overselling )

Great thanks guys,
Now I get it. So there are at least 5 available seat 8K which shows on the seat map as well as 11,12 A&K which Elaine points out not available until check-in.

-Steve

Not quite. There are at least 5 available tickets to sell. The whole complement of seats may already have been sold, but the airline is continuing to oversell.

What the expertflyer information is telling you is that the flight is beginning to get close to being sold out, which may mean more than 100% occupancy. The seat map is telling you that there are a number of seats being held back and 1 seat still available to be pre-requested. The two sets of data are quite different, and not really reconcilable, but both are telling you it is a pretty busy flight in upper.

Hope this helps.

Jeremy,
Following on from your point, expertflyer is showing two Z fares still available and when I try to do a dummy booking it will give me a Z return fare for £1339.
Is this any indication that UC is not as busy as first thought, otherwise there would be only J&D left. Or are VS just trying to sell the remaining seats.

-Steve

It is just the last of the z fares being sold off. The z is a highly restricted and advance purchase upper fare, so it will shortly go off sale. It isn't really an indication that upper is not busy, just that there happen to be two Z's left. In terms of business, there remain a maximum of 5 fares available for sale, and with likely overbooking, that implies the flight will be busy in upper.