af101

Used to see this all the time... About 10 years ago when flying regularly to MUC on short notice, there was restricted CE but only full fare ET remaining, and the CE was cheaper. Thankfully my corporate travel policy was sane.

Hadn't seen it for a while, but a couple of days ago I booked a AMS return for early Feb where this was also the case.

Swiss Tony

Normal order has been resumed!

Abstract1

So.......what prize did you get for traveling in business???

r00ty

My corporate travel policy says Y only. If I use the official travel agency it would only show the Y fare.

But in this case I'd keep a screenshot of the corporate TA price. Plus the screenshot showing both prices on BA.

Then I'd state I bought the club ticket, and they can feel free to either expense me the club price, or the Y price.

In general, they're not crazy. But I do know some corporates have very strict policies with no common sense angles to take.

clum90

Yup. STR-LHR on 01/03. Second image comes after skyscanner pushed me to BA.com. Seems to be a significant discount for the same product.....perhaps BA flagged me as a big spender ....

Sixth Freedom

In a world where capacity is variable this type of pricing should not occur.

Under fixed capacity models it can make sense to flog off the higher cabin at a cheaper price now if you want to hold back lower cabin seats for people booking later. But with variable capacity you should be able to "curtain move" this away.

But there may be a couple of explanations:

i) capacity may not be as variable as we think - perhaps the aircraft is not available for curtain movement, e.g. because the flight is operating to the UK or there is not enough time on the ground at LHR between rotations for curtain movement

ii) forecast demand for CE is so low that the curtain will be positioned at row 2 or 3 and cannot go any further forward - under such conditions capacity becomes fixed

iii) RM messed up - route analysts are only human!

Paralytic

I just did a STR-LHR on 1/3 dummy booking on ba.com and got the cheaper figures.



Are you sure you have "lowest price" selected when you do the quote? I get your higher figure when I choose "Flexible".

headingwest

I've not seen this before with BA.com bookings, but with AA and airberlin bookings I've seen similar..linked from a TA site the prices sometimes come in cheaper.

Although in the example above it does indeed look like the flexible booking quote was given.

Globaliser

If you're looking at a flight that's C2 D1 Y1 (or something like that), then strange pricing is hardly going to come as a surprise.

clum90

Got me there. It is the flexi fares, sneaky how they set that as the auto preference on the home page.

ScruttonStreet

My company is one of those that in this situation would still require me to book the economy fare, even if more expensive (and even if the economy fare was more expensive that the business fare + any change fees to make it 'flexible.')

This regularly seems to happen on flights to Jersey where I will be paying more at the back than others (no doubt T8191and iWife as they pursue CCR/Premier status) are in CE.

layz

Cheapest is the default. However, the preferences are sticky and if you select flexible it'll remember it for future. So if you looked at a flexible fare (or selected it accidentally) it'll remember and offer it next time. Doing a search with cheapest should make it default back to that. Note: bugs in the site may mean behaviour is slightly different so try clearing cookies if it still defaults to flexi.

I had the same issue with eastcoast.co.uk I had booked tickets for someone with a railcard. A few weeks later I booked tickets for myself but didn't carefully check the options. Unfortunately it must have 'helpfully' remembered the railcard and I hadn't realised until I collected the tickets and it had 16-25 printed on there (the age range of the railcard, used to say Y-P back when I was young enough!).