Originally Posted by Globaliser
One more word of warning: The airline may show different displays to different countries. For example, a UK agent may see Y5 B3 H1 when a US agent sees Y0 B0 H0 - or vice versa. That's another tool that the airline uses in yield management.
Absolutley right and the reason why all of the availability tools we currently love are in fact useless to anyone looking to buy a flight in or out of the UK... at least when it is busy. No disrespect to the providers of such tools, it is a limitation of the systems they depend on not of the excellent service and effort they have put in.
An example on one I was on before clearing a waitlist yesterday
LHR GRU 15th Dec
All the tools show: F2 A0 J9 C8 D0
I0 Y1 B0 H0 K0 M0 R0 0 0
My bolding as I'm intereted in a cheap biz seat.
However, UK based availability has in fact at least 6 seats still availabile in I-class. Thats some difference to premium bargain hunters: I0 to I6.
As a final thought I did intentionally say 'buy a flight in or out of' the UK because you can infact take advantage of fares starting from other destinations as long as they are valid for sale in the UK.
Eg, I just this week bought an ex-ATH IRCEUR fare for a nice £1380 on the aformentioned fligths. BA in Greece and ba.com couldn't help me as their inventory is Euro based and equivalent to that shown above, i.e.
I0. I called BA in the UK and they had plenty of inventory for the same itinary and at the EU price. Thats gotta be a turn out for the books- UK selling an EU origonating el-cheapo premium deal that has no availability from said EU country directly
So... where/how can we actually access UK based inventory? That *would* be useful, the ways I'm using to determine it atm are a real pain....