Increased price for 7 adults vs 1 adult with I9 & O9
 

I'm looking at buying 7 adults tickets on TIA - LHR in June. Expert Flyer is showing I9 and O9, so looks fine to me to book in a single PRN for up to 9 people for either economy or business.
When I price for 1 adult I get fares (before taxes) of €29 (O HBO) and €139 (I), however when I price for 7 adults it comes up as €45 (O HBO) and €155 (I). Price jump seems to be at 5 people. I can't see anything in the fare rules on number of passengers which causes this price jump. Any idea what is going on here, or is this normal (I usually just book for 2 adults)

This could be a DIF (dual inventory fare).This means that to get the fare you are seeing would need there to be O class as well as specific availability in one of the W, E, T, or P classes.

I'm not expert on this, so the following could be nonsense!

Doesn't a given booking class such as 'O' actually encompass several different fares within that class. E.g. one way TIA to LHR I can see

• OLZ0WO
• OLV2WO
• OLV2OMR

etc, all at different prices and rules. What I don't know is does O9 availability mean they will sell at least 9 of any of those fares, or maybe just 5 of the cheapest, 9+ of the next and so on....

Maybe someone can clarify?

It's not a linear progression as far as I understand. So it doesn't sell 9 O class and then zero it, and then 9 Q class etc.

The additional bit here is buying them in one booking. So had you done it in two and say bought 5 first, it wouldn't necessarily mean the flight became O4. You second booking for the remaining 4 may not have priced up in O as your first booking could have caused O to go below 4.

There is also point of sale availability, are you checking availability for the correct point of sale? Basically if the POS you are actually using for the booking is O5 and you look for 6 or more it will price them all in the next one up so Q. It wouldn't price it in one booking as 5 in O and 4 in Q.

Could perhaps be 'Additional Price Points' available for booking via NDC - the New Distribution Capability?

https://ndc.ba.com/capability/offer

Not relevant here, but NDC inventory is fixed at the Point of Commencement, not the Point of Sale.

Ahhh yes thats what i meant additional price points rather than DIF as its short haul but same idea applies.

Out of interest, do the call centres run off NDC?

My understanding is NDC is for travel agents only, because it allows them to access things like additional price points that we already could do direct in the BA reservation system.

Unfortunately I think it's all a bit more nuanced than the fare classes would have us believe.

I was making a booking for 5 recently - with only 4 available in the lowest fare bucket.

I tried lots of options as I didn't really want to have 2 PNRs but I also didn't want to pay the higher fare bucket for all 5 passengers, which was what ba.com priced up by default.

Then ba.com priced up a mid-point fare for all 5 together - slightly higher than the lower fare but lower than its original offer. Don't know why but I happily jumped on it!

Because the OP quoted in Euros, I would assume that they were indeed booking at an Albanian point of sale, and while that could be the same as a UK point of sale as shown on Expertflyer, it's also quite likely to be different. They could try switching it to Italy POS but that's not a sure answer either.

EF lists the lowest published fares in these booking classes at €45 (O) and €155 (I).

Using ITA to price this, the €45 and €155 fares are shown whether for 1 passenger or 9. (If you're trying to reproduce this, don't forget the GDS fee of €13 per fare component which ITA adds on.) This is consistent with ITA's normal behaviour, which is to use the lowest published (base) fare.

My guess is that the fares that the OP can see of €29 (O) and €139 (I) must therefore be private/non-published/similar, which would be consistent with the idea of additional (lower) fares being available via NDC - but only for smaller groups of passengers.

You can get the €45 (O) fare from ba.com all the way up to 9 passengers, which shows that inventory availability is not the issue here - clearly ba.com is using O9 to price this.

I'd make two separate bookings at exactly the same time, has worked for me before when a bucket runs out !

Thanks all. Just tried a variety of POS on Expertflyer and they are all showing I9 O9.
Sounds like the €29 fare is just a good private fare limited to 4. Think I'll make the booking over two PRN - between us we have 1 gold and 1 silver card so not a huge issue. If the price jumps I can always voucher it and start again.

I've seen this before. { With BA and EZY }

As far as I understand it from analysis over the years, prices even within the same fare class/bucket are dynamic. So if you had 30 tickets in V say, there may be 6 sub buckets of 5 prices within the fare class. If there aren't enough available in the lowest fare bucket, then rather than charge you for X in the cheaper bucket and Y in the more expensive one, it will charge all tickets at the more expensive rate. { Just to throw in more confusion these prices also adjust both ways frequently based upon supply & demand. }

Where it gets interesting is that with EZY if 2 people are trying to book the same ticket(s) at the same time, the latter gets blown out and pays the initial higher rate. However that doesn't necessarily happen with BA, and the second booking sometimes goes through { but may not be ticketed instantly } or the reprice is actually less than the original high rate.

Moral of the story, always price up 1 pax first and if there is a difference for the whole party, split the bookings. Unless you're unlucky enough to have somebody make a massive booking in between yours, you will always be quids in.