danall2

Hi all,

Just wondering if you could help please? I am looking at a flight in July 2020 and the selling class on the BA website is D. However expert flyer shows seats available in selling class I - Do you happen to know why i am unable to access these cheaper tickets?

Many thanks,

Dan

BertieBadger

Is the Point of Sale the same in both?

I believe BA.com defaults PoS based upon the departure city, whereas ExpertFlyer obviously allows you to set it explicitly.

Try an EF query with a PoS matching the departure city.

FT-Diplomat

@danall2 we would need more details on your itinerary to comment on this.
​​​​​​​This could be because your ExpertFlyer search is looking at things through a specific country POS (e.g. UK or US) and BA.com defaults to the POS from where your first flight is departing...

danall2

It is London Gatwick to Punta Cana on 23rd July 2020 - BA selling class is D and expert flyer is showing 6 R seats.

BertieBadger

Set the PoS to the UK (as BA.com will do) and Expert Flyer reports:

BA 2205LGW 12:00p → PUJ 4:05p
J9 C9 D9 R0 I0 W9 E9 T0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L0 V0 S0 N0 Q0 O0 G0

Which matches the D class the website will offer you.

danall2

Oh right, i never knew that. SO where was it pulling the data for the R seats from? Does this mean that there will be no more R or I fares for this flight? As i am sure i checked when it was released and there were no R or I fares from the date of release!

Globaliser

If you set the POS to US, you can see R3.

There's actually no guarantee that there will ever be any seats released in any cash booking class (although some seats in J for Club is a pretty solid bet). It is often the case that when a flight opens for booking, inventory is made available only in higher booking classes. Revenue management may release inventory into lower booking classes later. But there are no guarantees about this either.

You're really looking for R or I class seats, not R and I class fares. There are R fares and I fares filed - you can see these in ExpertFlyer too. But you can't book using those fares unless there are seats (inventory) to book them with.

brunos

It is very common that an airline does not open availability in cheap fare buckets from its home hub, but does for connection pax from other countries.
For example the flight mentioned as R# from FRA. Germans can buy into the cheaper R bucket.

sammyg901

Try expedia.com , this will sell using the US POS

BertieBadger

Different territories (points of sale) frequently have different availabilities. For example, a USA PoS was showing R3 when I checked on that flight, and you can confirm this by changing the PoS on your own queries...

Will they release R and I to the UK in the future? I think that takes us into the realms of revenue management and therefore the only answer we can have any degree of confidence in is "maybe".
​​​​​​
With that said, the flight is quite far out and so (by my limited understanding) I think it's the case that the cheaper buckets will not necessarily be released immediately - on the basis that anyone who absolutely needs to lock in a flight date that far out is probably willing to pay for it. But I refer you to my earlier "maybe"...

danall2

Thanks all for your help, it makes sense. Could it be they are waiting for the sale? As i booked this same route at the same time last year on 30th Aug and BA was in the sale and the cost of the seat was almost half the cost they are currently selling it for at D. I do hope that could be the case!

If you search a week prior to this they have I fares all the dates of that week and the three weeks prior also.