Does BA get advance warning of major events and adjust prices accordingly?
 

I'm trying to second guess the date of England's trip to Rome for the 6 Nations 2022 by looking at spikes in fares.

There is a huge spike from 10-12 February departures (£45 on 9/2, £342 thereafter) which would suggest the rugby MIGHT be that weekend but no dates have been officially announced yet for 2022.

For the record Alitalia's fares are also much higher during the same period.

So, as the thread header say, do airlines get advance notice so they can adjust prices for expected demand?

For info, despite the crazy cash fares, there is RFS availability on all flights and in all cabins for the same dates, so this has nothing to do with number of seats already sold as the award seats would almost certainly go first in this case.

If anyone does have inside info on next years dates, do please share!

I'd say blanket price increase for half term and other standard holiday periods ?

Also, booking the furthest possible date out often yields horrendous prices which will settle down shortly after

I did wonder about half term, but it is the following week. Also, mid-February dates have been available to purchase for a few weeks now so it not like they have only just come out. Also, prices come back down to normal levels after the 4 day spike.

BA's revenue management computer is programmed to take into account every scrap of information they can get regarding sporting events, concerts, political rallies, school holidays etc in order to maximise revenue.

Reckon I'll hedge my bets and take advantage of RFS seats then. If the dates are wrong and I'm not quick enough to rebook on the right dates, I've only lost the fees. A gamble worth taking.

Under Book With Confidence you can amend for free so I'd say that's a great idea

Sounds like a plan.
Revenue management work on the theory that if they've got the dates wrong they can always lower the prices later.

Sure. I don’t know how they collect it, but they’re certainly not going to offer many sale fares during a period of historically peak demand. Same for hotels.

No reason to discount ticket prices this far out. Anybody booking in February 2022, is likely price insensitive and thus, willing to pay top fares. If BA can't sell at those prices, then closer in, it can open up discounted fare buckets.

They guess it as best they can. A friend works in revenue management in another transatlantic airline and dropped me a line to ask if something was on in Dublin for a particular weekend, as competitor pricing had spiked for that weekend and he couldn't work out why. I had no idea, but they monitor it and adjust pricing accordingly. All sorts of things are included, school holidays, bank holidays, sporting events and so on.

Not sure if they get advance notice precisely, but they do monitor all of this.

Remember that is 'valentines weekend' too. Its a peak weekend on the BA avios calendar too.

There is also an element of automation in there: If people start booking for certain dates and BA sells a lot more seats than expected this far out, then prices go up. So even if BA does not know when the game is, the algo would still adjust prices automatically (though maybe a little later and with less precision).

Every flight on every day for 4 days is the same price. Even in periods of high demand one would expect there to be slight variations across the 5-6 flights per day.

one would expect there to be a similar spike for Paris on Valentines weekend, but there isn’t.

Paris is cliche thats why