HarryKUK

Hello,

Quick Q re: BA sales fares.

When fares are put on sale, does that mean more of the lower buckets which may have been closed before the sale are opened up, or do the actual prices of existing open buckets fall?

More specifically for my situation, I need an O class seat to open up on a specific date but at the moment V is the lowest - and we are in a sale. Does that mean O will probably not open up now or could they later decide to open O class after the sale?

HarryKUK

Oh and another Q, are the fares allocated to a particular bucket fixed or can they change?

As in can an O class ticket which is say £350 one day suddenly become £400 (still in O class), or are price rises solely linked to moving up the buckets?

agehall

Fares and buckets are two separate things. A fare is what describes the rules and price of a ticket and it books into a bucket. This means that the fares are "always" there but you can't book them unless the bucket it books into has availability. And there can be many fares for one bucket. One fare may for example have an advanced purchase rule of 30 days while another has 14, both booking into O class.

You can never predict 100% how an airline releases seats to a bucket, but usually it closes the buckets with the lowest fares first and so on. They may however, at any time, adjust the available seats in any bucket.

Edit: The best way to understand this, is probably to get expertflyer and look at fares and availability... It's the combination of these two that makes a bookable ticket...

Calchas

In general the buckets that are full tend to stay full

Calchas

Both can happen

Also there might be several O fares, but one day the cheapest is no longer applicable

headingwest

Are the numbers in buckets evenly distributed within classes? For example, would a flight have the same number of seats in O fare as they'd have in S or Y fare?

Ldnn1

No, the lower fare buckets are effectively a subset of the higher buckets. Generally there should always be at least as many Y as there are S, and at least as many S as there are O, but not the other way round.

agehall

In general, I would say no.

Seats (actual, physical seats) are divided into cabin classes. Cabin classes have a number of buckets which each has a number of fares.

The allocation of seats into buckets is determined by the black arts of revenue management. This means that while there is some predictability in how the allocation will be done and how the distribution will change, it's really up to a black box that we know very little about. The only thing we really know, is that this black box is trying to maximize profit.

headingwest

I've often wondered if there are more 'O' fares on some flights, as they seem to be available more often on certain routes. European flights seem to be sold out of 'O' much quicker than, say for example, LHR-MIA or SIN-LHR. But I guess that's simply down to the fact that there are many more fares available in every bucket.

Calchas

I think it is just a question of yield management.

The buckets are actively managed by algorithms; it is not the case that in obtaining an O seat you automatically decrement the fixed-size O bucket by one.

Anonba

You also have to take into account that O class may have advance purchase minimum and maximum stay requirements, saturday stopever may be required etc. Just because O class is available doesnt mean its a valid fare for the journey you want to book!

HarryKUK

Thanks all, I was having issues amending a return sector (SJO-LHR via MAD) - new quote was over double the original.

Managed to find a reroute via Miami in Premium for less which was an added bonus, still around 70% more than what I paid originally for the return but coming back in W makes it a little more bearable. Plus extra Avios and TP as the SJO-MIA sector is booking into H class for some reason. Win.

Four hours to transit at MIA from AA to BA - should be find from what I've read on other posts..?

Sixth Freedom

Taking one seat from O inventory will always reduce the available inventory in every fare class in and above O by one in the immediate term.

However if the RM analysts have influenced the optimiser to constrain O availability to a fixed quantity less than that which would be available under unconstrained conditions, then following a sale of a seat from O inventory the optimiser will release another O class seat immediately afterwards. So while it can appear that the number of seats available is staying the same, technically this is not actually the case.

The RM analysts might do this if they believe that larger parties have higher willingness to pay than smaller parties.

Sixth Freedom

This is a good question and the answer involves an evaluation of both the optimisation and strategy sides of pricing and revenue management ("PRM").

First, let's examine the mechanics of how BA make a sale.

In the PRM environment as practiced by BA, a sale occurs when fares valid for sale in a particular inventory class become available that are lower than the fares available most or all of the time for that inventory class.

The two fares are distinguished by a fare basis. For example,

OREG2BA = GBP 500 + YQ + TAX
OSALE9 = GBP 300 + YQ + TAX

...which is a reduction of GBP 200 against the normal price.

The so-called "regular" fares are still available for sale, but ba.com will automatically price up the lower fare, unless specific conditions such as a no Saturday night stay or time to departure being outside of the sale advance purchase window are met.

Now, let's look at the optimisation side

Let's assume for the sake of argument that expected demand to come and fares everywhere in the world where the sale is not in effect does not change.

This means that from a pure optimisation perspective:

i) the expected fare for a particular inventory class from the sale market reduces
ii) the expected fare for a particular inventory class from all other markets stay the same.

If the flight is anywhere near constrained, a PRM optimiser will reduce availability of the fare class in question in the sale market but not in the rest of the world.

Under this model, O class might well open after the sale, but not at the current lowest O class fare.

So having a sale will reduce availability of lower inventory classes all being equal. But that limits the effectiveness of the promotion...

...so now let's consider the strategy side!

The PRM analysts will most likely in some cases influence the flights they manage to manually increase availability of the sale fare. This will be done on the basis of demand to come and accordingly will involve holding back seats that are expected with high probability to be sold at higher fares in the future. Most likely the RM analysts will take care to reduce award availability at the same time and go mwahahahahaha when they think of the posters here on FT!

So having a sale might well result in the number of seats available in the lower inventory classes increasing and O class may never open again.

Globaliser

This is not universally the case (and just about every other posited rule in this thread is not universally the case).

If you look at CE booking classes, at the moment it's quite common to see something like J9 C0 D0 R9 I9.

Similarly, in ET or WT it's currently quite common to see something like N0 Q0 O0 G9.I've also seen cases where booking one seat in a low booking class reduces a slew of booking classes by more than one. Hypothetically, booking one seat when it's N9 Q7 O4, and seeing the display immediately go to N5 Q5 O0.

Which goes to underline that so far as we punters are concerned, the best approach to take is: the only rule is that there are no rules.