Originally Posted by Globaliser
IHowever, the number of seats that the airline might theoretically sell on any particular flight is unlikely to be constant, and very unlikely to be published by the airline. Overbooking strategies and other yield management techniques may make these numbers incalculable. In a cabin of, say, 20 seats, the airline might be prepared to take bookings for, say, up to 40 seats at x months out, but reduce that number over time until the day of the flight. Or a sophisticated yield management system might be prepared to take more overbookings at full fare than for restricted fares at any specific point before the flight, because more of the full fare bookings will cancel because they're on more flexible conditions. .
The "Maverick Award' availability would only kick-in IF less than 50% or 75% of J seats were sold 7 days out. So, if any of the scenarios you describe above is happening 7 days prior to departure, quite simply, there's no 'Maverick awards' made available.
That's kind of the point here...once all of the crazy contingencies that FFPs use as pretexts NOT to open seats are exhausted, and there's STILL 50-75% of an empty J cabin 7 days out, that's the time to release to us the basically 'conditional' award tickets.
For routes that have historic high walk-up sales, then its the member, not the FFP that assumes greater risk of award seat having to be re-accomodated. Over time, members who book 'Maverick awards' on these low advance sale/high last-minute routes and are consistently not maintaining their seats, they'll decide whether to keep trying or not...its very self-policing.
This policy might end up only being applicable for a select few non-trunk routes, but IMHO, ANY incremental increase in premium class award inventory, however conditional, is a start. I have been on too many intl. flights where empty J and F sets abound, so clearly all the inventory management gurus and their historicles (or 'hist-oracles') are producing far more art than science. The 'Maverick award' is just meant to compensate for such J sales prediction anomolies.
Having just recently flown AF CDG-ATL, there were 2 out of 12 F seats taken and less than 30 out 56 or so J seats taken. Knowing how long I fought for my original award seats, finding out how wide open F/J were, was very perplexing.
With respect to complexity, then just open this 'Maverick Award' to top-tier members, who are more likely to understand.
Originally Posted by Globaliser
And airlines may regard the total number of seats available for sale at any point in time (including planned overbooking) as a confidential number..
Unless I'm missing something, all of the TA booking engines can peer into airline revenue inventory. If a flight is highly sold or oversold, then Maverick award aren't relevant anyaway. If the flight is selling under 50-75%, then there's no hiding from that, so I don't see any confidentiality or competitive advantage issues.