Originally Posted by ranskis
Conclusion:
There is no advance purchase rule anymore in the scandinavian market but the cheap buckets seems to be chronologically closed in order to leave only expensive tickets available a few days before departure. as you know, i love how marketing tries to make us believe it is possible to buy 650 SEK ticket up to departure... AF seems to open all seats up to Q/W 48/24 hours before departure on quite many flights but not all (one can see K2M2Q2W2E0N0l on AF and i have never seen E2M2H2Q2V2W2L0 recently on SK)
I agree totally. It is also easy to find examples (for example ARN-HAM) where ExpertFlyer shows wide open flights (down to Q or even L in some cases) but sas.se claims that there are no other seats available than Economy Flex. If you try to book from the US site (clear all cookies first) you may - but not always - be able to get those seats and actually ticket them. When you finally board the flight it's only 50% full.
BA actually has the same piloshophy and a few days before the flight the only availability is Y9 and B9 and one day before it is Y9 and then there are 50 open seats when you actually board..!
Too some extent I actually think the old system was more honest - even though I probably prefer the oneway system anyway.