It's called yield management. They try and force as many people as possible into paying full fare Y (or close to it) by pretending they've sold out the lower classes, then when then think they've captured all the people who will book for that flight even at full fare they open up the lower fare buckets to get the people who are more price sensitive. It's the fairly obvious way of maximising the revenue for the flight if you get the timing right.
Last edited by christep; Mar 27, 2010 at 12:31 pm