soartoday

Hoping someone with more experience might be able to enlighten me on what happened, and whether the old fares might come back....

I've had my eye on SAN-Hawaii (all 4 islands AS flies to) fares in December. The dates I was looking at were hovering around 200 each way, which is consistent with what other carriers seem to be offering.

I searched one more time at midday today, then decided to book tonight. Suddenly, the entire second half of December went to $500+ each way, for all 4 islands. Looking deeper, I found that the seat maps are still empty, but they've zeroed out all the low fare classes (the lowest available are B dates e.g. BL0OZSMN).

All the Alaska fares for December are now higher, not just dates within 90 days or whatever. It seems like they decided not to offer the discounted coach fare classes, with the hopes of selling only the higher classes...

Has anyone seen Alaska inventory management do similar things for other routes? Could it be a glitch?

PVDtoDEL

Hard to say if it'll come back down - I've definitely seen AS close lower buckets temporarily while putting in a schedule change or perhaps adjusting their inventory management algorithm. In my experience, if it's going to come back down, it'll probably be within a week or so.

A week from today, if the fares are still that high, it's probably intentional and you should probably start planning accordingly. Not to say that the fares won't come back down later, but if AS revenue management thinks they can command a higher rate, there's a decent chance they're right...

rustykettel

Adding to that, I've seen prices for a given itinerary jump in the evenings, then return to normal the very next day. Meanwhile kicking myself that I didn't book first, and cancel later.

Did find availability down to H fares SAN-HNL, fwiw.

soartoday

Thanks guys for the quick replies. Sounds like it's not a completely hopeless situation!

​​​​​​I'm not usually as fare sensitive when booking work travel, so this is the first time I've seen large swaths of dates go up suddenly (for any airline) without a good reason (e.g. end of published fare same). Usually I just see when the 21 day or 14 day fares go away resulting in higher price for some dates. Plus, this was a $600+ round trip swing, not just the gate going up by $50 or whatever.

rustykettel, did the H fares still look like the $500 each way range? I knew I should've booked those $200 Christmas time fares that seemed too good to be true....

boycruz

today i looked at sfo-was/phl/nyc around nov 18
every day was 555 each way with no variance
from nov 18 -25

seemed maybe a place holder fare ?

chrisl137

Second half of December is peak season for families going to HI over the holidays - they might reopen lower fare classes, but they might be bumping them up for people planning for the holidays. Are other airlines showing the same prices?

soartoday

Since I was trying to use companion pass, I didn't look closely at other airlines until after the surprise this evening. I see UA r/t fares under $400 for same dates.

​​​​https://www.google.com/flights#flt=/m/071vr.HNL,OGG,LIH,KOA.2018-12-15*HNL,OGG,LIH,KOA./m/071vr.2018-12-25;c:USD;e:1;sd:1;t:f

rustykettel

soartoday

Yeah I see those on the fare calendar. That worried me since they didn't take ito *all* low fare classes, just the ones around the holidays

CDKing

That is Thanksgiving holiday week so its probably legit.

redtigeriii

You are right, something happened yesterday afternoon all across the board for December, as I saw changes with award levels. I'd been looking at award tickets around new years for a few different destinations. All of a sudden every single flight I've checked the last couple weeks of december, even really short ones like PDX-SEA, now shows only 30k miles + $6 as the lowest level available. Of course this is peak travel time and its tougher to find availability, but it wasn't quite like this before. It sounds like this might be related as I noticed it around the same time you did yesterday.

soartoday

Yeah, on my route the low fare buckets including awards all went away! Sounds like this might have been a systemwide adjustment.

Now I'm wondering whether they "forgot" to block out the holiday period and just "fixed" it yesterday. Does anyone have experience with award or fare availability in late December previous years?

bmvaughn

We were looking at a JNU-LAX fare that was $300ish and is now $550, that's for a random weekend in Feb.

soartoday

Thanks for the data point! Maybe they are doing some broader updates. Fingers crossed, hopefully temporary.

For the SAN-Hawaii routes, I am seeing the lower fares classes available in Jan/Feb.

FlyingBear

I had been tracking a ton of fares and yes, it seemed like there was a massive dump yesterday. Seeing it on flights from SFO-LAX, SFO-SEA, SFO-OGG on flights in November, December, January, and May. If you use Google flights, it seems like a lot of Alaska flights are jumping considerably and to the same value over many dates (at least doing a cursory Google flights search).

For example, search SFO-LAX RT on Alaska, you'll see $400 RT mid-November to around Thanksgiving, the entire latter half of December into early January (ok, this is the holidays), but the latter half of February, latter half of March into April (as high as $517). Obviously, I'm not inventory management, but it sure feels like someone coded something wrong yesterday afternoon.