Globaliser

Unless you have inside information, you can't know that - and you certainly can't divine that from the seat map.

Availability for BA284 on 2 October is F7 A6 J9 C0 D0 R0 I0 W9 E6 T1 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N1 Q0 O0 G9 - so although economy seems to have a lot of space and it seems unlikely that WT+ is overbooked, CW may be overbooked to the extent that BA is expecting to use some the space in the F cabin for op-ups. You (and I) simply can't know whether that's going to happen.

goldengate

At the risk of belaboring this, if it's J9 how is Club World possibly overbooked?

In any event, I believe what we have established in all the above threads is:

- BA releases a certain number of F award seats initially
- At 30 days out they may release more
- The old policy of releasing award seats 48-72 hours prior to flight seems to have been discontinued
- Award availability long haul West Coast to LHR scarcer than ever
- If you really want to be in a certain seat, you can buy it

Again, I will have an eyewitness on the plane who will tell me if they do fly any F seats empty, and I think they will. Protect the Class.

mda03jb

As has been alluded to, the BA bean counters will have a value attached to an Avios and therefore a theoretical liability on their balance sheet comprising total Avios in circulation x value per Avios. I suspect their valuation would be comfortably less than 1p considering they control redemption availability and can devalue at will. For a 1 way F redemption from the West Coast they could remove 85-100k Avios from their liabilities so let's say £600-800 by filling an otherwise empty seat. A one way F SFO-LHR would cost you £7941 any time in the next month.

Last minute bookings are often the ones that are least price sensitive due to urgency and I've certainly paid more for a last minute one way Y as a J return booked 6 weeks in advance on the same route.

If BA made a habit of releasing last minute premium award seats then they'd only need to lose 1:10 revenue bookings to redemptions and they'd lose money. I suspect on a route like SFO they'd lose many more as it's probably a route with significant last minute J/F price no object bookings by virtue of the local economy & population.

It's frustrating but in the eyes of the money men who run the show perfectly logical.

On the flip side though, earlier this year I got a OW Y redemption BOS-LHR 3 hours before departure when a delayed connection made me miss my original flight. The cash cost for the ticket was £1600 & I was about to pay it when it crossed my mind to check award availability. I was pretty amazed at the time & even more so when I boarded & realised I'd got the last seat in Y, W or J so always worth keeping your eyes peeled!

Globaliser

Although the reality is much more complex than this, let's take a simplistic hypothetical. There are 86 CW seats on the aircraft. Assume that the 6 empty F seats you see will remain empty until departure. That gives you 92 physical seats you can fill with CW passengers. Assume a 10% no-show rate on the day. You can then hold 102 reservations for CW. But you're still prepared to take 9 more now - so maybe you only have 93 CW reservations now. But that's still got CW overbooked by 7 at the present time.If this is a sensible way of running the business, why not?

kingcole974

Still 9's showing in the top 3 cabins to LAX on 3/10. Tightest cabin is WTP and........

3 x WTP redemption seats released.

I'll be back tomorow with zero expectations

mikeyfly

All the usual west coast suspects currently have WT+ and nothing else on Tuesday. Not looking good I guess

goldengate

I wonder if they are holding seats for paid upgrades instead of award travel?

kingcole974

In my case, the flight I was monitoring jumped to just 2 available in F at t-36h having been 9's for weeks before.

J was not oversold and W was queit, so much so that there was award availability here.

Where did these 7 odd F seats go at the last minute? Did that many really sell in just a few hours at over £10k a pop?

scubaccr

With KLM FB.... I historically qualified as FB-Gold on 30 flight segments in Y, AMS-LON/UK, ie 15x 1segment return AMS-UK/Europe flights, so 15x 200euro average = 3000euro. A business KLM rtn flight eg AMS-TPE-MNL is circa euro2800 , and on its own won't get me any status.
However KLM also gouge on AMS-LON eg rtn 110-150euro 6weeks out, but book 1way and 370euro ... so again I book return, or 1way on AMS-LCY with Cityjet who don't gouge)

I would hope KLM/AF keep flight segements as a second option to Gold (60 Platinum) along side a change to revenue.
BA similarly have a segment count for Bronze/Silver/Gold, which is where many ultra-frequent Y economy fliers will qualify from being nowhere near requitred BA TPs.

BA trans continental (Europe - Asia / Americas) 1way flight prices can't be used in a true sense.... but the associated BA 1way price gouging goes make use of BA avios very attractive on a 1way route LON-Asia or Lon-USA in both Y+J.

I still remember when award charts for 1way were pricier than 50% of a return just like revenue fairs, but changed 10years or so ago to me straight 50% 1w awards too.

Whilst I am used to airlines charging 2/3rds of a return fare for a 1-way (eg SQ), BA are often totally out of kilter in this area, eg Y gbp800 1w & gbp2000 rtn, J gbp8000 1w & gbp2000 rtn. So 1w are really worth gbp400 / gbp1000 not the BA gouging prices of 2000 / 8000 , 5x or 8x the "true price" .
(In fact with BA I have on a few occasions booked unwanted return flights for this exact reason)

I recently used Finnair UK-HEL-Asia 1way as not priced weighted adversley for my oneway flight unlike BA. Finnair will thus get some more of my trips, especially true when I need oneways, but I still creditted to BA.
I did miss the 100% BA-Gold avios bonus though on the flight, the for me, major incentive to fly BA v QR/QF etc.

corporate-wage-slave

Delete (wifi outage)

corporate-wage-slave

You aren't alone in doing this, but it's important to look at the whole aircraft, not just one or two cabins on it. In your case WTP was overbooked but they wanted to sell all cabins until the last moment in order to fill the aircraft with revenue bookibgs. The hard fact is that this A380 will leave today either totally full or with 2 empty WT seats, and about 5 people upgraded from CW to First, probably revenue passengers. Another result for Revenue Management over the punditry in FT. The direct answer to your question is probably 6 late WT sales, and a couple in both WTP and CW, netting probably £20k in all, more than a few POUGs.

See Globaliser's reply for another illustration of this.

goldengate

Report from the air yesterday:

BA 284 from SFO to LHR - 3 empty seats in F, no award availability. One seat ended up being broken.

BA 66 from PHL to LHR - half of F cabin empty, no award availability. Great service.

"Protect the Class" is alive and well. Interesting revenue management "strategy."

Pilot37

I do the LHR>PHL>LHR route quite a bit (admittedly on Fridays/Sunday’s) and it traditionally is very poor for reward space once you are about 2 months away from travel day, especially with just 1 x BA flight a day since the start of the Summer schedule. I have seen the availability with 9’s across the board 7 or 10 days out from departure day and yet come flight time, only a few seats remain. Very happy to see the 5pm LHR>PHL flight back from next April.

Pilot37

Globaliser

It's a standard revenue management strategy - close the lowest booking classes. And award booking classes are the lowest.

Sorry that it doesn't make you feel special enough, or able to rely on there being cheapie space in the cabin. Which is kind of the point.