Originally Posted by pilotchute View Post
Any travel agent can see the loads
Originally Posted by
Chris2303
They cannot.
They can see only availability.
Qantas staff with access to Amadeus/Altea/Staff Travel can see loads
worked with Amadeus few years back, when I was multitasking for a small airline & travel agents sometimes book seats on a flight until it is sold out, so they can see availability & they can see how many seats can be sold, before an airline says no more, so this is effectively the load, plus maybe a few % for the no show factor.
Way I understand it, if an agent or whoever, books seats in a CRS, the airline isn't charged straight away, so if the agent cancels the seats relatively quickly, the airlines is not charged by the CRS company & doesn't get ****ty with the agent.
Had to ban some agents, who would book out a flight & not cancel the ones they didn't want straight away, so the airline was charged segment fees by CRS & yet got no revenue from the sale of tickets & probably lost sales, as no one else was able to book those flights, so leakage to other airlines was probably happening. You had to wonder, if the agents, were being paid in some form, to stuff up our inventory.
Remember stories similar to this when Compass mark 1 started. Res staff (talking 1990 before the internet) would answer the phone & would only get clicking sound, so someone, probably from Ansett or TAA/Qantas had organised for computers to continually dial Compass's 1800 number & therefore jam the phones, so real customers couldn't get thru. It happens, but very hard to prove.