booking subclasses hierarchy
 

Dear flyers,

I am wondering what is the booking subclasses hierarchy for Cathay's (revenue) Economy class. I am suspecting that using ITN, the order (from highest to lowest) are as follows:

Y B H K M L S V

Presuming the above to be correct, I would like to ask for your opinion on the avalability of each of the sub-classes during the high/shoulder season. From my experience, "Y" often remains until the end, whereas "L", "S", "V" usually goes very quick. However, my interest lies in the middle 4, which are often the sub-classes I purchase my tickets in.

In terms of avaliability, how do the "B", "H", "K", and "M" rank with respect to each other? I realize "B" has rather higher priority than the rest, but what will be the next-in-line? I will appreciate any opinions, particularly from those who are familiar with the industry.

Thanks

If you use http://flyaow.com/class.htm you will see that their availability by class often fluctuates wildly within a matter of several minutes or hours (I'm starting to think that their yield management system uses a computer algorithm based on dice, bones, and rattles). Flights may go from no availabilty to some seats open to wide open and back multiple times, up until the flight does truly sell out (at which point it seems to stabilize). I recently experienced a lot of frustration trying to book tickets for myself and friend on 2 different reservations (different departure cities) because of this.

Moral of the story: If the flight you want has no availability in the class you want, don't give up. Check back and it's very possible that a seat will eventually open up.

I attribute a sudden drop of available seats to 0 as due to loss of connectivity to the booking system seat availability database. And the return to the real level is seen when that connection is re-established ... in other words, these are defects in the web software implementation and not real changes.
The recent downtime when BA converted to Amadeus demonstrated this and serves as confirmation (at least to my satisfaction). I'm fairly sure that there is no yield management going on with such frequent changes. You need considerable talent to infer the actual flight state (bookings) from the publicly-available information.

Yes, except that the same wild fluctuations in availabiliy and fares that displayed on www.flyaow.com/class.htm corresponded to the results I was getting simultaneously when I was trying to book the tickets on www.cathaypacific.com. It wasn't always just a case of "all or nothing" (indicating a connection problem), but major variations in numbers of seats available within the various booking classes, often within a span of minutes.

[This message has been edited by dogcanyon (edited 04-01-2002).]

You cannot ascertain that the lower classes mean that the cheapest are gone, the ascends upwards towards Y on CX.

CX has different class codes according to each market.

For example, for tickets ex-USA, the majority of the inventory CX goes towards H class as that is what the discounted economy class literally most fares CX sells under. The remainder would be for other people who originated from elsewhere.

For fares ex-Singapore for example, majority is in M class for special 2 week tickets. 1 year validity tickets are sold in K class. It used to be in B class. But during peak holidays, that inventory is shifted to L class.

So basically how each class code shows up on the reservations system cannot reflect what is actually being sold. CX in turn actually 'holds' off a number of seats in all economy class codes till x-days / weeks prior to departure to maximise revenue.

So judging from the responses, I guess the conclusion is that I can't simply estimate the availability based on different subclasses availability. I am often the victim of such harsh "inventory control", as I have never bought "Y" ticket.

As some of you suggested, I usually never give up, and check the availability on the ITN for my specific subclasses almost every half day when I need to travel. Once I see the preferred flight "open up", I pick up my phone and call MPC desk to have my flight changed immediately, because I know they don't "last". I've seen a inventory suddenly drop to "0" in all classes in matter of hours, but in 2 weeks time, they all changed back to full availability. Wonder what's the trick behind, and who's behind.

By the way, the particular ticket I'm concerned is ex-Australia in "K" class. I have an option of paying extra AUD$320 for "B" class if the other is sold out. In the past, I was frustrated with "M" class's limited avalability (ex-Canada), and now I understand why, cause it's the same as ex-Singapore's 2 week excursion fare! The good news is that if "K" in Singapore is used for 1 year open ticket, I should expect a more generous availability when I book my ticket in OZ in this subclass!