Let's say I have an aircraft registration id (not sure about exact name) like LN-DYO. Where can I find an information about configuration of the aircraft - i.e. number of first class seats, business class and economy class seats? I would like to have some automated solution (API? parsing of web-pages?) to get this data for a number of aircraft.
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
3
The usual way would be to find out which airline operates that aircraft. Usually Google will give the answer. Otherwise planespotters.net will help. In this case it is Norwegian.
Then seatguru will show you what the interior configuration is.
I don't know whether these website have public API's that could help you and I think that is a bit off topic for Aviation.SE.
answered Aug 27, 2014 at 9:22
-
$\begingroup$ Thanks. Flightradar can also help to identify which airline operates the aircraft, but the main question is about number of seats... $\endgroup$– LA_Aug 27, 2014 at 19:01
-
$\begingroup$ @LA_ You can see the number of seats on seatguru can't you? In this case it says 186 Economy Class seats. $\endgroup$– DeltaLima ♦Aug 27, 2014 at 19:07
-
$\begingroup$ Unfortunately, seatguru doesn't have information about many airlines I am looking for. $\endgroup$– LA_Aug 27, 2014 at 19:11
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
6
I seriously doubt there's any system that would have such information for a non-trivial number of aircraft.
Not only is the information pretty irrelevant except for the purpose of internal planning by the owner/operator of the aircraft (who obviously have it for their own aircraft in their internal systems), it's also liable to change suddenly.
For example Martinair flies (or flew, they may have retired them) several MD11 series aircraft that had palletised passenger cabins. These aircraft could, within a few hours, be converted between passenger and cargo configuration as needed (and I think could even be operated with partial passenger cabins). Such a source as you're looking for would never be able to reflect that.
Then there's the 747 Combi variants that used to be operated by KLM which had similar arrangements (but were permanently set up with only partial passenger cabins, an arrangement that could have been changed).
Aircraft may also go in for refurbishment and receive entirely new cabins with different layout. And that can happen without the aircraft being sold, just because the owner changes their business plan (e.g. they might reduce the number of business class seats on some aircraft because of reduced demand for them, sometimes even temporarilly, for example during the summer holiday season when business travel is slow).
So the source would need to get constant updates from people who have far better things to do than provide such updates, as they have no need whatsoever for the service that that source might provide.
-
$\begingroup$ Thanks for so detailed comment. Understand that what you've described could be a case. But when tickets being sold, we know for sure how many seats are available, right? Doesn't it mean that some systems (like QPX) can have some historical information (which will be up to date more or less)? $\endgroup$– LA_Aug 27, 2014 at 19:00
-
$\begingroup$ @LA_ do you know? Really? You might get a graphic showing a cabin layout so you can select your seat, but do you know whether that's exactly what will be in the aircraft when it's time to board? Or whether all those seats are for sale? $\endgroup$– jwentingAug 28, 2014 at 5:02
-
$\begingroup$ As a customer, I don't have such information. But as an airline, if you start the sale, you should know which seats are for sale (configuration is not so important as number of seats). Or, does it work differently - for ex., airline starts to sale 100 economy class seats, if all are bought, then one aircraft is used; if only 50 are bought, then another? $\endgroup$– LA_Aug 28, 2014 at 6:58
-
$\begingroup$ @LA_ yes, and the airline has no incentive to give that information to a third party. What's in it for them? Nothing at all. $\endgroup$– jwentingAug 28, 2014 at 7:05
-
$\begingroup$ Saying 'yes' do you confirm my first statement (=aircraft is known when sale starts) or second (=aircraft is chosen when sale finished)? ;) $\endgroup$– LA_Aug 28, 2014 at 7:19