jpdx

We’ve been watching the new subforum for a month, and had a lot of discussion in the background. We have settled several issues, and are looking for input on others.

Here are the things we decided on:

a) Expired fares will be moved to the MR Discussion subforum. We had considered leaving them here (per TB’s wishes), but it became evident quickly that expired fares with a lot of discussion clutter up the forum too much. We decided against having a dedicated subforum for premium fare discussion and expired premium fares. Instead, expired premium fares will be moved to the MR Discussion subforum , with the notation (PREM FARE GONE), which should make it easy to search for these fares. We will stick with our main MR Deals forum tradition of only moving expired deals that keep coming back to the top; most expired threads see little activity and thus drop to the bottom of the MR Deals forum. We will use the same approach in this subforum, so it is not necessary to RBP expired deals that have only a handful of posts and can be expected to drop off the active pages quickly.

b) We will not be allowing the discussion of tricks in this forum. If a fare is posted that includes “tricks,” it will be sent to the trick-it thread in the MR forum. Please refrain from posting these fares here. We don't expect this to be a huge issue, because C/F tricks are comparatively rare and difficult to book (because you either need a low C/F fare or an engine that handles mixed class bookings).

c) We will not be allowing fare requests in the Premium Fares subforum. In fact, fare requests aren’t allowed anywhere on FT. We do allow (in the MR Discussion subforum) requests for help with finding or optimizing MRs, so if a member has found a C/F fare and wishes to optimize the routing, that request would be allowed (in the Discussion subforum). Requests along the lines of “help me get the family to Hawaii in F” will not be allowed.

Now, here are the things we’d like to get some input on:

1) How should we organize the information in this thread?

Thus far, we have allowed 80% of posted fares to stand as they were posted, without enforcing a thread title convention. We now believe the best option is to stick with the standard that has suited us well in the main MR forum, namely, PDX-MUC $1500.00++ on DL, with any important information about the fare included in the title. The assumption will be that the fare is in C or domestic F (so this would not have to be specified), and any deviation from it should go into the title (e.g., First, Suites, but also if someone finds West Coast-Australia in HA F-- many people would assume that this would be a proper C seat, but it's really just domestic F). We have encountered some issues with the currencies used to quote international fares -- quotes should be given in a currency that is meaningful to the fare (so PRG-ATL likely should not be listed in GBP, even though the poster may have found the fare on a website in the UK).

2) Do Premium Economy Fares belong here?

We see some potential problems coming up with Premium Economy. We've already had some discussion about that -- e.g., do these fares belong here at all, and why is TK/CX ok, but not UA? To many posters, it doesn’t make sense to house PE with C/F fares, while others say, anything more comfortable than standard coach should be discussed here.

3) What to do with different threads for similar fares?

A huge challenge we haven't quite solved is what to do with the various threads started for essentially the same deal. Clearly, we don't need a half dozen threads for the various PDX-MAD, EUG-LYS, SEA-AMS fares we've seen come and go over the past months. Merging these poses various challenges. First, it's fairly demanding on moderator time and invariably leads to discussions ("my PDX-MAD fare is different from the PDX-HEL fare already posted, why was it merged?"). Second, how would we go about merging?

At one end of the spectrum is the option to do nothing, and let every thread stand as it was posted. At the other extreme would be fairly aggressive merging into threads that could be organized by region (e.g., “Ongoing West Coast-EU sales”), carrier/alliance, or price range (e.g., “US-EU sub-$2k”). We suspect that merging the multitude of fares posted into larger threads would improve the readability of the subforum, although we recognize that this would again move us in a megathread-y direction, where people would actually have to read the threads (oh, the horror!) to see what’s being discussed.

4) What fares are appropriate for posting here?

Another important decision we have to make is whether we define a standard for the kinds of fares posted here. As you know, we stipulate a certain cpm range in the main MR Deals forum, and a thread reporting a $480 PDX-JFK coach fare wouldn't be appropriate there (although for secondary markets, it might be posted in the good deals for certain city pairs megathread). We have no such guidance for Premium Fares. Should we go with the types of cpms that were used for the CMB-type fares of the olden days (e.g., 10-15cpm)? Not likely, considering that this wouldn't leave much to be posted. So what about that $15k LAX-SYD F fare? What about someone who decides to post the $3800 US-EU summer trip they just booked? Should they all be allowed to stand? What about regular sale fares most regulars would consider a waste of time, but newbies might get excited about?

Rather than giving a cpm guidance, we could stipulate a certain % off the “standard” fare, say 30% minimum. Would that be too difficult to compute for most posters? And what would happen to fares that don’t meet whichever threshold we establish? Would they be deleted, or sent to a thread similar to the “city pairs in economy” we have in the main MR forum? From a moderation perspective, we want to minimize arguments about whether a fare is good enough, but also don’t want to discourage new posters from sharing their finds.


So, here’s your chance to provide input on the future direction of this subforum. Please understand that we’re specifically asking for input about items 1-4, but NOT about larger issues, including whether this topic should have been created at all, the flaws with the process leading to its creation, etc – that discussion has a place in the “Close the recently created Premium Deals Forum” thread in the TB forum.

--jpdx, MR Moderator, on behalf of the MR forum moderators

izzik

1) Most ppl seem capable of following common sense convention of listing city pair(s), cabin, fares, and airline code(s) in the thread title. Would be nice if ppl specify OW vs RT but apparently there are some that don't want such info in there (wish they'd explain why!).. In the example of HA F, people should know why HA F is not truly intl First.. but modifying the fare class based on public opinion is misleading.

I would also add that all relevant details about the fare should be posted on Flyertalk, not linked back to some other website/blog post. Tip all the hats you want, but don't turn this into a surf-my-blog-please free for all.

2) If PE fares *don't* belong here, where do they belong? Are they still in that Good Deals Prem Econ thread somewhere? Maybe that thread can still exist here.

3) It's probably just easier to leave related fare threads as is.. although true duplicate fare postings should certainly be merged, as usual.

4) Most people don't know the standard fare for a route, and even then.. that is debatable. That's why I don't think the % off idea will work. The CPM idea is tough - maybe make it a little loose, but it will create a standard that is easily understood and easily enforced. Otherwise, this forum will turn into a veritable barf bag of non-deal "deals". For fares that didn't meet the CPM cutoff, have a thread for those. That model seemed to work in the Economy MR forum.

OverThereTooMuch

Your "fairly aggressive merging" proposal seems like a great fit. Yes, it gets a little like a mega thread, but at least you know all of the conversation is about one specific deal.

Gets a little harder when it starts out on one carrier/alliance, and then others start matching it. I feel it would make sense to merge those into one thread, but at some point you reach limitations in title size. Perhaps the mods could just link the discussions in the OP's of each thread, and end up with a per-deal mega-thread for each alliance?

One nitpick: Please make sure you're clearer on the region in the merged titles. For example, "Ongoing West Coast" isn't clear enough. Needs to be "Ongoing West Coast US".

Yes, that's too difficult. Many people (especially new folks) won't know what the normal price is. It might be 30% from some other fare they once saw, but that previous fare may have just been outrageous

I agree that some general guidance is required, but I don't have a good suggestion to make on the pricing. A "deal" to one person may be a high fare to another.

Dieuwer

1) Fares in the thread title should contain all fees and taxes. No gimmickry with posting "$1000+" and later finding out it really is $2000.

2) PE fares don't belong here. Just leave them where they were. Also, I never have seen many PE deals in the first place.

3) Leave fare threads as is, although I suggest to consolidate the annual Summer, Thanksgiving, and Christmas deals into three mega threads.

4) When I am monitoring a market for a J deal, I wait until I get an alert when the fare has dropped substantially from what is was before. For instance, I was monitoring BOS-EZE and it had been ~$4000 ai for a while. Recently, it dropped to $2600 ai. I think that is worthwhile mentioning although the cpm (25) might be a tad too high for many.

orbitmic

First of all, kudos on all three things that you have decided as all three sound excellent to me! As for the other questions:

1) Like dieuwer2, I would much prefer all fares in this sub-forum to be all inclusive. To me, all thread title should include the following information:

- The point of origin and destination (either specific airport codes, or countries/areas if a sale or fare is available to/from a whole area);

- The airline

- The class of travel (business or first)

- The all inclusive fare (lowest if whole area) including currency.

I do not really care about the order in which that information appears.

I think that the OP should also include the fare bucket and could include an example or mileage earnings but I would prefer the information not to be in the title as its value varies so much depending on the FFP one credits to (e.g, if I post a BA fare and mention how many TPs are earned, it just doesn't help people who accrue to AA or CX programmes.

2) I don't feel very strongly about that but I am among those who would prefer this sub-forum to be only for business and first class. This has been the convention of premium fares to date and I personally do not see any reason to change that.

3) Personally, I would consolidate only the threads that pertain to the actual same fare (e.g if there is a DL sale ex-Asia on Transpacific and a poster posts on ICN-JFK and the other on NRT-LAX I would consolidate, but not if there is a post on a UA NRT-LAX, etc).

If you want to go for the megathread alternative, then it becomes a question of how you organise them. If so, I'd go for a larger rather than smaller number of stickies that would be by region AND alliance. E.g.

- Intra North America (four different threads for OW, ST, *A, and others)
- Intra Europe (again x 4 threads)
- Intra Asia/Oceania (x4)
- Intra Africa/Middle East (x4)
- Intra Latin America (x4)
- Long-haul ex-North America (x4)
- Long-haul ex-Europe (x4)
- Long-haul ex-Asia/Oceania (x4)
- Long haul ex-Africa/Middle East (x4)
- Long haul ex-Latin America (x4)
- Others

In total, this would mean 41 stickies with the assumption that everything would fit in one of them and there would not be any additional "free" thread.

4) I'll admit that I would rely on common sense on that one. CPM is simply an irrelevant matrix in my view as it depends so much on what FFP one accrues to, whether one talks miles for awards or EQM/equivalent, with some FFPs relating the former to money spent, others the latter with money spent, etc. It just makes no sense to me. Conversely, % off makes no sense to me either. What is the "standard" price of JFK-LAX in F? It seems to change all the time, could depend on whether you are talking a premium transcon or a one stop flight on "normal" F seats etc. The same goes of a CDG-HKG or a SYD-CPT. I think that we need to assume that posters are sensible and I would be keener on the description of what is intended which should include:

- Mistake fares
- Excellent sale fares

but (as you rightly decided) NOT tricks.

I would also recommend reinforcing the going advice that if some posters consider that a fare is not "that great" they should just ignore it and move on rather than start a sterile meta discussion on whether the fare should be posted in the first place.

Hope it makes sense...

Global321

1. No comment on overall structure. But, I think a standard title is a must. Others have a better feel for what should go in there, but, it should include all the pertinent information.
2. Absolutely belong, but, as others have mentioned, there are not many of them. Maybe just have one uber sub-thread = "All Premium Economy Deals" (or something like it)
3. Put all similar threads that relate to the same fare together, with maybe an exception for East Coast and West Coast USA as those fares can be quite different. (e.g. SFO/LAX/SEA to FRA/MUC could be $1000 more than NYC/ATL/MCO to FRA/MUC) I would rather have a few extra threads than an uber one that hides great deals.
4. I think this is very hard to police. $5500 USA-ASIA good? Business, no. First, probably. How about $4300? To ICN on most carriers in Business, no. (but maybe you would say yes) But Singapore via Europe? Could be a very good fare. Even putting in a cpm would vary by carrier.

intuition

1. There absolutely must be a title standard. The only good thing about the forum layout is the ease of avoiding those threads one has no interest in. For that to work, the title must say it all, or as close as possible.

I don't think it is wise to assume fare class. It will only take a few economy fares to be posted without proper heads-up to realise the extreme unefficiency to not state it in the titel.
So I want class in the title too.

As for currency, I agree on using "meaningful to the fare". I dislike having everything converted into whatever people think is standard. If someone is willing to fly ex PRG, they most likely will have a pretty good feel for the current exchange rate. I have no trouble keeping track of the 5-8 rates that concerns me, but if people start to convert a CZK fare to GBP, then it is pretty annyoing.

Something like: fare class, airline, O/D, fare all inclusive in local currency, other notes

2. No. I my opinion they do not belong here at all.
They were not allowed here before, and they should not be now.

If they absolutely must be posted here, they should have a crystal clear lable in the title, like [PREM ECON].
And if we need this kind of lable, then all fares should have one. Because if the rule is 'only prem economy needs lable', people will forget and we are back on square one.

Ban them, or make sure we all know what kind of fare is posted.

3. I am against mergeing. The titel of such a merge will make the scan I talked about in #1 very difficult. Again, the title is the only thing I can see without clicking into the thread. I want to be able to NOT click into tens of threads just to find out they are of no interest to me.
Infact, this was the major complaint with the old thread - people said there was to much reading of things they weren't interested in.

I'm not saying it is a good thing having tens of threads for each fare, but that is what we get with a sub forum. People will post the fare they found. They will not do heavy research to find the fare has been posted but with a completely different set of O/D.
Of the two evils, I prefer having several threads clearly titled so I can avoid them all.

4. On one hand you need to have a guidance on what to post here, otherwise it will just turn into a bazaar of the same fares airlines post in their weekly newsletters. If I'm interested in KLM, I can read about their promotions in the mail, I don't need it once more on FT.

Having said that, I cannot think of any metric that will work well.
Great deals are not necessarily MR, so any CPM metric is not very good.

Cents per but in seat miles is slightly better. But like your fare example ex PRG, should we then post haléř per mile? Or should we now convert fares into us dollars, just to make it work into the CPM people seem to know and love?
And how does this CPBISM take into account the large differences between economy and First? It doesn't, so what does a CPBISM really say?

I'm leaning towards the XX% below standard fare being the best metric for guidance. However, I think most posters will have difficulty with knowing what a normal fare is. I surely can say I will not know it for every fare I find great. As a matter of fact, I posted one great CX fare here and got bashed for it not being good CPM enough.

Eastbay1K

1) How should we organize the information in this thread?

I generally agree with the "80% stands" rule but I don't know that the assumption/presumption should be C or Domestic F. I also don't know if certain fare classes in the title made sense, i.e., P is an F seat on OW carriers, but is a C seat on *A carriers.

2) Do Premium Economy Fares belong here?

Yes, if it is real premium economy cabin. Extra legroom sections of the Y cabin, no. Case in point - The LA W (premium economy) cabin is essentially the same as a Euro-Business cabin, but they've chosen the Premium Economy moniker. You'd be excluding almost all intra-South America "premium" cabin fares while allowing almost all intra-Europe fares for the same cabin type.

3) What to do with different threads for similar fares?

Keep them. I may scan thread topics quickly to see if there are any SFO or OAK offerings, but may ignore broader or more generic offerings.

4) What fares are appropriate for posting here?

Let the poster decide. If they are absurd or too high, they'll get no traction and end up quickly at the bottom of the heap. Especially with more revenue-based programs, it may not be absurd to spend $500 more than "a great find" if it is the ticket that gets you 1K for next year. We all have our "value" standard, and it shouldn't be pre-moderated out of existence.

privacylawyer

mahasamatman

I tend to lean towards the no Premium Economy fares, but not strongly.

However, one thing I would like to very strongly encourage is no more than one sticky on an ongong basis. Stickies make it difficult to see new forum traffic. One FAQ sticky is all that should ever be required except in special short-term circumstances.

LIH Prem

What about notification issues? Is there a way to solve that or is that off limits here?

If there's any way to get thread creation to create a post in a locked thread only writable by that process (and editable by moderators) we can solve the notification issue. I imagine that needs changes by the host though. Is that possible to look into?

The rest of the stuff is pretty much common sense, the first post should be the fare itself, where to get it, and all the details needed to reproduce it. Subject should include airline(s) and endpoints or regions and some indication of price so you can tell from the subject if you want to read the thread or not.

-David

kokonutz

Strongly agree with this: if someone posts a fare and it's not that good, let other posters point that out...or let it die a quiet, ignored death.

SeriouslyLost

I'm not liking the % idea. It will require a secondary search to find out what a IATA full fare is for that route/carrier, which is substantially pointless given that only idiots pay full IATA rates. And that's before even getting into the discussion of whether that full rate fare is even available: you're not saving X% if Y fare isn't even available to buy. (I should maybe use different letters there...) Lastly, it also relies on someone to get the calculation of the % right.

The cost and miles are easily confirmed. Confirming the % off requires everyone else to also go off and find the full fare and then make the same calculation. That's just asking for trouble & arguments IMO, and also increases the risk of someone finding a good fare and not posting it because they find the wrong fare as the "full" fare for the % calculation and think it's not as "good a deal" as it might be. To give a simple example: who can tell me off the top of their heads what are the headline ticket codes for JL, SA, A3, and NZ top line fares in J? I fully understand the idea of the % off way of calculating it, but there are just too many variables to make it a reliable or viable method IMO.

I much prefer a basic $/mile calculation and presentation. From there the post will (or should!) include the ticket class/es and airlines so people can work it out for themselves what their earn will be under various airline programmes/status. As for a ratio of what counts as good, IMO, a simple split of "domestic at or below $0.15/mile" and "international at or below $0.20/mile" counts as good for J IMO. For real F (as in Intl F) a ratio might jump to $0.30/mile - we can argue about the exact numbers, obviously, and those can change over time as needed.

Global321

Where do the fares go that do not meet this criteria but might be helpful to other flyers? Semi-good Premium Fares?

SeriouslyLost

The same place that fares that are 29.9% off rather than 30%?

Any system is going to have a line. That's the nature of systems. People need to cope with that idea. Personally, I'm pretty relaxed about where the line is. I think a "the line is here" statement is fine and necessary. People will, inevitably, post things above and below it. The readers can decide what stays up and is read vs what sinks like a 777 hitting the Atlantic.