BA recently moved to an Amadeus product for inventory management. Amadeus uses two concepts for inventory management - point of commencement (POC) and origin-destination availability (O/D availability). These two come hand in hand.

The logic behind how point of commencement (POC) based inventory works is completely different to point of sale (POS). POC inventory allows an airline to align their inventory based on the fares offered from that POC. With POS inventory, that was not possible to do due to the fact it is easy enough to evade POS by booking a ex-US ticket in UK POS for example.

POC based inventory also allows an airline to offer better inventory for POCs that are forced to connect, eg. EDI, GLA, NCL, MAN. This allows BA to target lower inventory out of those secondary UK ports where they are basically an equal competitor to KL, AF, LH who fly to multiple UK regional/secondary cities so that there is a lower fare available, whilst keeping ex-LON inventory tighter as they offer non stop service rather than connecting service.

Availability is also now offered on the basis of origin-destination city pairs, rather than per segment like before. Lets take an example scenario - there is a major concert on in London and thus lots of demand. BA could tighten up inventory on O/D pairs involving LON. This would have the effect of raising short haul pricing into LON.

Now lets say BA's revenue management policy says that they would prefer a sale on a long haul over a short haul. As inventory is looked at in origin-destination form, if someone wants to book EDI-SYD, the inventory offered might be wide open, all the way down to O class. This would then allow the person who wants EDI-SYD to still be able to book at an attractive fare.

Previously if the short haul EDI-LHR was already chockers and only B and Y class was available, BA would miss out on the long haul sale because there's no O class on EDI-LHR yet there was O class available on LHR-SYD.

Overall, it is a positive change because the limitations of the old system meant that lots of sales that could've happened, were lost.

For clarity, EF will only show availability correctly for the FIRST journey in a multi journey fare/ticket. For example, if you are flying LHR-SIN, stopover, SIN-SYD, stopover, SYD-MEL, stopover, MEL-SIN-LHR, then EF will only show the correct availability for LHR-SIN. For the rest of the journeys, SIN-SYD, SYD-MEL, MEL-SIN-LHR, EF does not show the correct availability as it cannot handle searching availability using POC LON.

POS does not equal POC. Setting the POS to the origin country of each journey will not give the correct inventory. As BA no longer uses point of sale, you will find the inventory shown regardless what POS you set in EF will be the same, be it Australia, UK, US, etc.

In short, EF is fairly useless for the myriad of carriers that use POC and O/D availability.

I'm guessing in these scenarios, people are using EF and therefore seeing incorrect availability.

If you have an existing PNR that is LHR-SIN-LHR, then the POC is LON. If you want to change the SIN-LHR, then you must look at the SIN-LHR availability using POC LON. As per above, EF cannot handle this correctly, hence there are discrepancies between what someone may claim is supposedly available vs. what a BA agent sees in a live system that produces the correct results intended by revenue management.

All bookings are affected. See above for the explanation on why you see the same availability irrespective of the POS that you select in EF.

You can still do your homework before calling but unfortunately EF is not a reliable tool for doing your homework anymore.

If your itinerary is LHR-DXB-LHR:

If you want to check whether the return has A class, do a search on the BA website for LHR-DXB-LHR with the correct dates on each journey.

Select the flights that you want, then proceed to step 3 flight summary where the selling class is shown. If you see A class on both LHR-DXB and DXB-LHR, then you're good to go with your GUF.

This process can also be applied to work out whether A class exists for the purposes of a joker.

Correct procedure is to cancel the whole booking due to the change of POC but BA staff probably have not been advised to do that yet. Other carriers that use POC and O/D are strict about this - they use an automated robot that will cancel the whole PNR when it detects the POC has changed as the POC should not change once a PNR has been created.

Jokers open up Z class, not A class. However there is no change to the fact that jokers require A class as the underlying class for consideration.

Here is an example where a joker can be handy.

Lets say I have a ticket that is SYD-SIN-LHR stop LHR-SIN stop SIN-SYD.

Lets say that there is A class available on SYD-SIN-LHR but no A class available on LHR-SIN or SIN-SYD with POC SYD.

Lets say that LHR-SIN has A class available with POC LON and SIN-SYD has A class available with POC SIN.

In this case I can apply a joker to give me Z class on the LHR-SIN and SIN-SYD to complete my return ticket.

Note that for joker purposes, the required underlying class must be available on the INDIVIDUAL segment searched on its own. To apply a joker in the J cabin you need D class when looking at the availability for the segment that you want to upgrade, on its own.

Say for example I am booked on CPH-LHR-SIN in K and T class respectively (Y and W cabins).

The availability for CPH-LHR-SIN is:

BA 815 J9 C9 D9 R2 - D class is available
BA 015 J9 C9 D9 R2 - D class is available

The availability for CPH-LHR is:

BA 815 J9 C9 D9 R9 - D class is available

The availability for LHR-SIN is:

BA 015 J9 C5 - D class is NOT available

In the above example, you can apply the joker to open U class on the CPH-LHR but not the LHR-SIN.

Correct, although see the example I gave above, where you can still apply a joker even if A class is not available in your POC.

For all carriers that use POC and O/D based inventory, searching a return in EF does NOT give you the correct results.

Here is a live example:

Itinerary:

27/09 SYD-SIN
11/10 SIN-SYD

The POC is therefore SYD.

If I search SYD-SIN return with the above dates in EF, this is the inventory that it displays:

27/09 BA16 F5 A3 J8 C6 D4 W7 E4 Y8 B3 H1
11/10 BA15 F6 A6 J8 C5 D1 W3 E1 Y7 B5 H3

As per what I wrote above, EF will correctly display the outbound inventory since the origin is also the POC.

Now lets look at what the 11/10 BA15 SIN-SYD inventory looks like from different POCs:

POC SYD:

F4 J4 Y4

POC SIN:

F6 A6 J8 C5 D1 W3 E1 Y7 B5 H3

POC LON:

F6 A3 J7 C4 W2 Y6 B4 H2

Notice how POC SIN above matches what EF spat out for the SYD-SIN return search. That confirms EF is doing two individual searches but simply displaying the results together on the same screen.

Also, notice how POC SYD has horrible inventory? This is because 11/10 is the last day for someone to fly back to SYD and be home in time for the end of school holidays so of course BA wants the higher yield from such passengers. This illustrates what POC and O/D availability can do for BA.

The only public way at the moment to get the correct inventory is to use the BA website and check the selling classes as per the instructions I gave further up.

In the F cabin, this was basically never a thing as A was at minimum always one less than F, but in J, W and Y, it was common to see this particularly last minute where BA basically had a policy of "we'll take anyone at any fare level".