seat availability

[dash8roa]

The wings site and the Usairways site show a different number of available seats on the same flight. Which one is more accurate? Also does the Venice flight to phl ever have weight restrictions as often as the Athens flight?

Thanks.

 

[BoeingBoy]

The public USairways.com site shows how many seats are for sale - i.e., remaining up to the overbooking limit. Wings should show the actual number of seats available, i.e., remaining of the installed (usable) seats. So Wings (aka the employee travel site) is more accurate but since many non-revs don't list till within a few days of travel it doesn't give a good picture earlier than that while the public site is better for seats sold a week or more out. The employee site does give both the booking limit and actual seat count, so the booking limit can be useful when looking at the public site.

Jim

 

[tadjr]

The US.com site will also show different because there are seats that are blocked on each plane that can only be assigned on the day of departure so they wont show as available for selection on the US.com site. I dont know which seats (or how many) are permanent block on International flights, but on most domestic flights you have 3 seats on the last row (for last minute prisoner/armed travelers), also several on the bulkhead for assist and a couple pairs usually near the front.
The bookings on the Wings page are actual numbers and more accurate than trying to count empty seats on the map since not everyone requests seats in advance.