GlasgowCyclops

HI All.

I wonder if this is normal or a "feature".

I have expertflyer and could see there was a reduction in a price on the 19th. So went to BA site and got a fare of £1756 from GLA-PVG in WT+. BA site says... book with a hotel?

So I thought... lets have a look. None of the hotels were in my preferred area/price so I clicked on "continue with flight only". The word "continue" is probably relevant here.

Next screen was back to a new search and the price was up to £2,600. Called Gold line who said... yep that is the price I see. The reason is the GLA-LHR flight in ET was full and they cant mix CE and WT+ so the afternoon flight 13.40 was not available to choose from LHR and only the more expensive 22:30.

So during my booking, someone has went on and booked GLA-LHR (fair enough) and used the last morning ET seat.

Surely BA has a seat block during the transaction unless the screen times out.

Ended up going Cathay.

Now the question is.... is this the norm or was it because I looked at the hotel option as well?

cgtechuk

From my experience, the payment and seat selection screen is the final screen and that is where the fares are "Locked" up until that point and in your case the hotel option screen isnt far enough in, It would cause havoc if every time someone got past the first page of looking up a booking with seats going and coming available all over the place,. Bit like the shambles that the QR site becomes during a flash sale.

GlasgowCyclops

:-)

Now I know I need to get to the payment screen rather than dilly dally.

Thanks for the advice as always. And I would never have known to wait until the 19th before being on FT and getting expert flyer. so thanks again :-)

flatlander

Sorry, you can't take a lock on an item just because someone is browsing, that would block too many people from browsing successfully.

You usually only take a lock on the item when you are near selling it such as when entering payment details ("Check out your basket of items"), or you don't take a lock at all and try the transaction and handle failure if the item is not available.

Most ticketing sites do the former, most ecommerce sites do the latter.

In the case of an item with options, like a ticket with seat allocation (airline, sport stadium, concert hall), you usually take the lock at the seat selection stage.

("Lock" in the sense of database lock)

Flexible preferences

This is similar to trying to grab those elusive 2 CW reward seats at midnight. Only right at the end will you know if you have been fast enough...