FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - FCM Buy up - No longer worth it
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Old Dec 23, 2021, 1:27 pm
  #9  
xliioper
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 22,930
Originally Posted by findark
My last three times seeing an offer has been within a few dollars of the route fare differential (the weirdness where DL seems to be including US in their upsell prices after taking a round dollar number is kind of bizarre so I can't be quite sure). The active reservation I can check has MSP-AUS for $181.68 which appears to be $169 + US. The route fare differential is $165.

Single-segment upgrades obviously can't directly follow this logic, but for example the fare differential on SEA-FAI is $130 (seems to be a $283.61 floor for lower fares) which is again quite close to your offer.

Yes, there are absolutely inconsistencies in the upsell mechanic versus actual fares, and if you know what you're doing you can exploit them in your favor. But to first order, I would absolutely say that FCM offers track with the fare differential.
If you are comparing SEA-FAI 3-week advance coach with 3-week advance FC, then yes, the fare differential is close to fare difference. But that's not what I'm talking about. The difference between a 3-week advance purchase fare in coach vs. less than 1-week advance purchase FC (which is what you would be charged when upfaring) is substantially greater than $149. If your MSP-AUS flight is relatively far out and you still qualify for 3-week advance FC fares and there is still Z bucket open, then yes, it stands to reason that FCM and fare differential will be close. Try checking closer in when those 2 or 3 week advance FC fares are no longer available. In the end, without a large variety of actual data, these individual anecdotal observations won't tell you very much. I'm still going with Occam's Razor and that the FCM offers are far less complex than people make them out to be. The fundamental flaw is the assumption that it SHOULD be about giving one a better offer than what one would get with an upfare, when the reality it is really about revenue generation through convenience as there are cases where it's not easy to upfare (when buying your fare on a corporate card or it's purchased for you) or upgrading individual segments or people simply don't check the upfare option.

As another example, DTW-MIA main cabin V fares (with a 3 week advance purchase requirement) are $64.19 base and allow ATL, RDU, JFK, LGA, and MSP routings. Connecting options will be somewhat higher than non-stop flight due to additional taxes (PFC + US segment tax), but they all have they same $64.19 base fare when booked in V. And yet, when I looked at the FCM offers with DTW-MIA-MSP-DTW trips, the DTW-MIA and MIA-MSP legs have typically been around $270, while the MSP-DTW leg is typically the $106.43 offer. Despite the fact that MIA-MSP-DTW is booking on a single $64.19 fare component just like the DTW-MIA segment. This strongly suggests per segment price points irregardless of fare construction and fare differences.

Last edited by xliioper; Dec 23, 2021 at 2:16 pm
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