I was investigating changing my return from HKG on an ex LIS in F in October 2005. I am specifically looking for a Friday night departure from HKG in November. I know that flights out of HKG in premium classes on Friday nights get booked up well in advance, but this makes no sense.

According to the BA UK and HKG (and Expedia UK) websites, I can have 6 seats in A on almost any of the Friday night flights in November.

The BA European websites (at least Portugal and Austria which I have checked) show NO availability in either A or F on any Friday night flight in November. This is also the positon on Expedia.de and on the SeatAvailability tool which seems to be based on European availability. So, it is obviously something related to the source of the booking.

Whilst I can understand that BA might not want to sell A class seats to a particular market (i.e. Europe) on particular flights, how can it be that they are not selling F seats for flights on which they are offering plenty of A seat availability in another region ?

Is this just an error in the sytem of is there some other logical reason that I am missing ??

P.S. - I have just had a lengthy conversation with quite one of the most intelligent and articulate BAS res agents ever: in Spain. He told me that this is quite normal and that Revenue Management decide from time to time how many seats - even in F and J - they are willing to make available to a particular market. This is dependent on the financial results of a given market over the financial year ending in March. If they sell too many cheap tickets they get allocated less seats overall even at full fare. On that basis it is a wonder that BA Portugal have any seats to sell at all !! It transpires there are NO seats sold on the flights I am interested, in but BA Portugal have simply not been given access to ANY seats on those flights, yet.