Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Kirsty T alerted me to SeatCounter.com today after she told me there were still 5 seats available on a flight she wanted to get on. I asked her how she knew as I thought this was ‘secret squirrel’ stuff kept by the airlines and perhaps travel agents — you definitely can’t get it from the airline websites (at least, not Qantas).

I put in a destination (SYD to LAX) on Qantas for a particular date  and got my results. I switched to Booking Class view, and was able to see how many seats were still available on that flight in a particular fare class (9 available means 9 or more, which could mean 10 or 50!).

It helps to know the fare classes (and they can vary between airlines). Kirsty said that on Qantas A and F were First Class (I wish!); C, D, J, and I were Business Class; W, R, T were Premium Economy; and presumably the other codes are for the various fares in Economy (discount economy, full economy, etc.). (If you’re interested, there’s a full list of air fare codes on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_class.)

This is very cool site and is a nice companion to SeatGuru.com, which I also use to see where a seat is on a particular aircraft for a particular airline.

Thanks for sharing, Kirsty!