Originally Posted by
Swiss Tony
There is a huge commercial justification for doing this, otherwise why bother buying a flexible ticket, which after all is where the money is/what pays the bills.
Easyjet only have the one ticket type, so they're not cannibalising higher fare types with the flexibility. If BA did this, why would the business traveller fork out £200 for a one way LHR-EDI when they're not quite sure when their meeting will finish when they can just buy a £30 ticket on the last flight & rock up when it suits them.
There may be a lot of goodwill to be gained from the flexibility, but at the same time it's commercially stupid.
It might be commercially stupid, but it makes a huge amount of sense from a sales POV and also operationally.
I used to work for QF at SYD, and often had to deal with last minute aircraft substitutions due to the operating aircraft going US, or major disruptions due to other factors such as weather - quite often, the substitute aircraft was of a lower capacity than the original aircraft, and if the flight was fully booked based on the original aircraft type, then large numbers of SLC (Self Loading Cargo) needed to be off-loaded onto other flights or accommodated overnight if it was late in the day.
From an OPERATIONAL POV, if you can get someone out of the airport and on their way earlier, it is one less hassle you will have later on if things go pear-shaped
From the sales POV, as already mentioned, it allows a seat to become vacant and thus resold. Once the earlier flight departs, that empty seat cannot be sold, and it is a revenue opportunity wasted. At least by allowing the *occasional* opportunity to transfer to an earlier flight, you are freeing up the seat on the later flight to be potentially resold.
Perhaps one way of doing this is to randomise the process, so as to make it possible, but not to the extent where those who genuinely need to be flexible come to rely on it so that they abandon the flexible airfares.
Dave