Viajero Millero

I'm looking at a flight that happens to be on a 763 and shows 100% availability on Y when I look at it on AA.com's "View Available Seats."

This flight is on 12/31/13.

However, I called the EXP Desk and they mentioned the only available inventory is in fact M, K, H, B and Y.

Is very likely there has not been one single seat sold to date. And the EXP line agent mentioned the airline may have "not released those seats yet."

What's going on here? Can they sell a whole coach cabin starting with the M fare? Arbitrarily? I have checked on KVS and EF, the lower fares exist (are published) there just aren't any...and have never been there.

Dave Noble

Are you looking for one way or return fares?

Looking at one way fares ( picking DFW-ORD as an example ) looks like the lowest one way faress are in M

Apieinthesky

How far out is this flight? AA will not attempt to sell the whole coach cabin at M+ fares. Fare inventories are very complicated, and none of us can explain how RM decides when or when not to release certain inventory.

Keep in mind that the lower fares may have restrictions like round trip required, Saturday night stay, etc.

KVS

Have you actually checked Availability?

http://www.KVSTool.com/Planning-A-Trip.php

You are looking at Seat Maps, not Availability -- please see:

http://Help.KVSTool.com/#Q2
http://Help.KVSTool.com/#Q3

Viajero Millero

Looking for "L" fare for a RTW trip, actually.

I am using Availability/ETR, indeed. Fare code by fare code, and I'm getting as available H7, K7, B7 and Y7 ONLY. No other coach inventory is available.

Yet when I look at the seat map there is no one single Y seat occupied.

tt7

Hmm, according to the OP's original post, 12/31/2013.

For the OP, it would be much more useful (and perhaps likely to get more informed responses) if you actually said what flight this is.

grahampros

Would seem for what ever reason ( and there could be one of many), Revenue Management has placed an inhibit on the lower fare classes.. meaning they have closed off lower fair buckets. Given it's New Years Eve they may be protecting the flight for an expected event.

As another poster said, we may be able to have more insight for the OP if he provides the specific flight referenced.

brp

Probably not, in this case, as the behavior mentioned happens quite often.

OP- why the assumption that lower fare buckets would be offered this far out? Why would the airline not try to sell the higher-priced seats now to those who want to travel on that specific day? If I were trying to maximize profit on anything, I'd certainly not open with my best offer.

If one has never looked at flight pricing before, this may be new. For anyone that has, this is old hat.

Cheers.

footballfanatic

exactly. why sell a seat for $250 to someone willling to pay $500?

Blumie

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (ok, well actually it was this land, which I understand is made for you and me), airlines would open up all fare buckets on day one, making the cheapest fares available first until they sold out, and only at that point would passengers have to pay higher fares. Today's space-age technology allows airlines far more flexibility in setting fares, and they have learned that it makes sense to sell seats at the lowest fares only if they are unable to sell them at a higher fare. It's like when you go to the department store to buy a suit: the day the new season inventory arrives and the racks are full -- even before any have been sold -- all of the suits are available for purchase only at full price. It is only as one gets closer to the end of the season, if the store has been unable to sell the suits at full price, that it begins to discount them, sometimes gradually and sometimes dramatically, depending on a variety of factors. It's not a perfect analogy, but I'm sticking with it!

SeriouslyLost

Why not describe it as basically an inverse bell curve. Because that's pretty much what it is with time to date of departure along the bottom and price on the vertical.

brp

Because it really isn't. Just because it's high at the beginning, high at the end and goes lower somewhere in the middle doesn't mean that it has the characteristics of a Gaussian distribution ("bell curve"):

Distribution is not symmetric about the mean
The tails on either side (as a result) are not the same
It is nowhere near a continuous function

Basically, looks pretty much nothing like an inverted Gaussian

Cheers.

Ord Liza

I found it funny that, when I happened to go from this thread to an unrelated thread in the US Airways forum about misinformation and cancelled tickets, I saw a post that said this:

"The really crappy part is that, in the past, buying tickets for far-out travel dates used to be rewarded with a really attractive price. For the most part, this is no longer true, as the revenue management gnomes have pretty much put the kibosh on cheap seats booked way out."

Viajero Millero

Here's the seat map in question:



Here's what EF shows me:



Thanks all. I have wrongly assumed airlines do sell their lowest tickets until sold out before obviously having the last few be Y fares. Guess that's not the case.

SeriouslyLost

I'm not saying it is a bell curve. I said it's more accurately described as one than the analogy given that I was replying to.

The detail of how any given airline runs their yield management software isn't some big secret, nor even really the point in regards to this particular thread. They all use the same yield theories because those theories drive most commercial yield systems, whether it be airline tickets, cruise lines, automated stock pricing and bidding software, or apartment rental pricing, etc.