Earlier today I wanted to book a WT+ from MAN to JNB for Wednesday, and the return a week on Thursday. This normally comes in at about £2800 so when I saw that it was quoting £4300 I was a bit taken aback.

Being over 4K I had to get authorization. This took half an hour or so, and when I logged back into BA, anticipating an even higher price, it had miraculously returned to normal. Great, I thought, and proceeded to make the booking, only to be informed on the very last page (after giving credit card details etc) that the flight had sold out while I was in the process of booking it.

Having seen the strange price change earlier I decided to try exactly the same booking again straight away, and this time it went through OK (at £2800).

According to MMB, it seems there are still 3 or 4 seats left unassigned in WT+ (although of course they could be sold, but just unassigned).

Is this down to a flaky booking system, or do you think someone could have been booking & cancelling seats in some sort of attempt to "play the system" somehow?