Wanted to fly from CDG to a European destination tomorrow morning. In Business Class, only full fare business was available at EUR 395, but no saver Business fares on that flight. On all other flights, EUR 244 saver Business was available. Then I checked Economy: least expensive ticket at EUR 49. So I bought that. Upon checking in three minutes later, I am offered to upgrade to a wide open business class cabin for EUR 69.

What is the logic? Closing saver Business fares at sale which would have created revenue of EUR 244, but then letting people on a EUR 49 ticket upgrade for EUR 69? Strange.

a big part of it is done by systems , so not always human interventions , but just apply the rules decided by AF/KL yield management team

for how many destinations did you checked the business saver ?? are they all in same country ?? also did you checked on other flights for the same destination for the following days ??

The logic is, that the target group is the people who just bought Eco and hadn't looked at Business; normally you shouldn't get such a cheap upgrade option... but I guess that booking situation at this time is not following anything close to normal patterns and that might throw the revenue control programming out of the loop...

Probably a nice example of how an organization with silos functions. Good to know though. This is a perfect reason to cancel my upcomming award ticket and benefit of these deals.

The logic could be that flight history suggests that the overwhelming majority of individuals who buy business class tickets on that flight are not price sensitive at all and more likely to buy a full fare business class ticket than a cheap eco one if business saver is not available so that there is no point in discounting business class as the extra revenue that you might get once in a while from the odd passenger buying a business saver ticket would be less than the extra revenue you get from those willing to buy a full fare ticket if business saver is not available.

Ultimately, whether it is a right calculation or not depends on the quality of the pricing algorithm but it is at least conceivable that it might be the right decision to take to maximise revenue. I assume that your flight was an early morning "full business day at destination" type of timing and that those with business saver available were on flights later in the day?

It's logic for normal times, and not for times when planes are flying with only 3 or 4 people on board.

You were shown last-minute business class fares. Clearly, they are not offering last-minute economy fares given that the plane is empty...which is probably not an unreasonable "mix".

Have a safe trip.