Guide
What are block seats?
A block is a group of seats on a flight bought in advance by a tour operator, consolidator or travel agency, to resell before departure. Here is how blocks work and what makes them hard to manage.
Block seats in one sentence
Block seats are seats on a specific flight that an airline sells in advance, as a group, to a reseller — usually at a net price — on the understanding that the reseller will sell them on to travellers or to other agencies.
They exist on scheduled flights, where an airline sets aside part of its capacity for a partner, and on charter flights, where a tour operator may hold a whole aircraft or a share of one.
Hard blocks and soft blocks
A hard block is a commitment: the reseller pays for the seats whether they sell or not. Hard blocks usually come at the best price, because the risk of empty seats has moved from the airline to the reseller.
A soft block (an allotment) can be partly returned: unsold seats go back to the airline by an agreed release date, often in stages before departure. Soft blocks usually cost more per seat but carry less risk.
Deposits, deadlines and names
Blocks usually come with dates attached: a deposit when the block is contracted, release dates for unsold seats, a deadline for passenger names, and a ticketing deadline. Missing them can mean losing seats or paying for seats that were never sold.
That is why block holders need to know, at any moment, how many seats are still unsold on every flight — and why a spreadsheet updated by several people is risky.
How block seats are sold
A tour operator or consolidator rarely sells every seat itself. It sells most of them to travel agencies, at prices that differ by agency, and sometimes shares part of a block with another operator. Every one of those sellers needs to see the same live seat count, or the same seat gets sold twice.
That is the job of block seat management software: one live inventory per flight, prices per agency, holds that expire on their own, and tickets and manifests produced as seats sell.
Questions agencies ask
Are block seats cheaper? Often, because the block holder bought them in volume at a net price — but the selling price is the block holder’s decision.
Can names be changed? That depends on the airline’s rules for the block and on the block holder’s own policy.
What happens to unsold seats? On a hard block, the block holder bears the cost. On a soft block, they return to the airline at the release date.
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