corporate-wage-slave

In that case, having considered splitting the group into two or three etc, I have come to this conclusion: your best option would be to book 9 people first, Gold led, at a time when I9 is showing (or whatever it is you are trying to do). Leave it 15 minutes, and hope you get at least I1, though you may end up with one person in R, hopefully not too much extra. Book the Silver in that booking, particularly if they could become Gold at some point between booking and travel. Then monitor it for the next 24 hours, if I9 reappears then you can use the cooling off provision to get the lower fare. Then you will have the problem of seating a Gold led block next to the solitary Silver. You could try TCP + Gold Seat Privilege to force the seat, but personally I wouldn't bother, particularly if there is a risk of equipment change (TCP is a somewhat manual process). Over time, via MMB Seating, you should get most if not all of what you want, though Theoretical Seating may have interesting impacts.

Deckard

We owned the exit rows . This was Vienna.I suspect that time I might have done it as two bookings, allocated as many as possible then TCPed.

Deckard

On a recent family flight to Rome we'd booked on two PCNs as two of the party were late comers. We TCPed them to join us in the exit row. Theoretical seating moved them out both ways!

stewaran

9 is pricing up the same as 9 times the 1 person price currently.
so it would just be the extra 1 that could possibly get bumped into R

stewaran

Yes, this looks the way to go, Is there anyway i can see the R price for a ticket im looking to book?

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, several ways. You can perhaps find a fare for £200 (for example) in I, then the next Thursday evening - a peak date on many routes, you will perhaps see a fare for £250. Click on the flight number in BA.com/flights and it may then show the R. While not perfect, it may well be correct for your details too. You can also get ITA Matrix to do it using "f BC=R" under Advanced Controls / extension code. You can also find it (not always accurately) in Expertflyer. If you ring BA.com and get a Newcastle contact centre agent, and explain the issue, they will probably help (and perhaps call you back) since 10 passengers in one booking may look rather super on their targets (though we may use slightly different vocabulary). And finally put the dates / flights here and someone will look it up for you.

The problem with 9 plus one is that the computer may think "oh, is this a football game no-one has told me about", and stick to R for a while, whereas 6 plus 4 may not trigger that, but trying to play roulette against BA's revenue management algorithm is a mug's game.

Airprox

What route and cabin?

stewaran

Much appriciated, ill give it a shot on ITA matrix.

The return flight i need is late august 19, so should be released for sales in the next few days.Ill try and do a little homework before, and if the 1R ticket ruins the pricing for us all we can slum in at the back!

stewaran

Its for Costa Rica , Used "f BC=R" in ITA matrix and the R fare is about £350 more than I, so shouldn't break the bank.

Globaliser

EF should be accurate for ex-UK fares. In fact, in one sense it's more accurate than ITA, because ITA adds £8 per fare component to the base fare (ie typically £16 per round-trip) for the GDS fee, whereas EF's listing is net of the GDS fee and reflects the base fare that ba.com would charge. The main occasion when EF fare listings are inaccurate is when you're asking for a fare that's priced in one currency (eg EUR) but you ask EF to display it in another (eg GBP). Then there can be rounding errors which can be handled differently by ba.com, EF and ITA.

The GDS fee issue doesn't matter if you're only looking for the difference in fare between I class and R class, as the ITA quote will show the same difference as the EF fare listing.

However (and this is the main point of this long-winded technical stuff) the fact that both are accurate means that EF and ITA provide a useful sense check for each other, and can give an assurance that you have got the correct figures and that there will be no nasty surprises lurking later.

corporate-wage-slave

No, I was surprised myself, I found some ex UK fares available in BA, not in EF, and the usual reasons (private fares, end-on etc) did not appear to apply. The best I could rationalise it was that BA.com had gone live with data that EF hadn't (yet) picked up, but I'm not sure of that either. I'll try and trap the next one I see, but I found a few last week.

Globaliser

Interesting, thanks - I will have to keep an eye open for that, too.

wijibintheair

corporate-wage-slave

No, because if the I bucket went I8, when you try to book it, all 9 passengers on the next search would then go into R!