Why only 4Fs and 4As
 

Hi, I have been wondering whether CX withholds 4 First Class seats (for upgrades or whatever). You see, if you check the load (eg from Galileo) for a date in the distant future where there is unliely to be any booking, it will show F4 and A4 (and all other classes 9). My Q - since there is a total of 12 First Class seats, what happened to the other 4?

Thanks.

My friend, inventory information is not interpreted that way. 4F and 4A simply means 4 first class inventory is available for EITHER of F or A, NOT individually. Therefore, for example, if one person grabs the seat using either subclasses, the inventory might show 3F and 3A. OR, it can remain at 4F/4A because, as you say, there are 12 seats available, and say they intend to sell 8 (4 for VIP or whatever). Then, that's 7/8 seats available, so it will still show 4F and 4A.

Similar story for other classes. When it say J1C1I1 doesn't mean 3 seats are available. If one person grabs the biz seat, it might turn to J0C0I0.

Hope this helps

this is an IT problem.
you can also ask the same question of what happened to the 300-9 Y seat.
hope this analogy is clear

To be specific in analogy, it would be
Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 S9 V9 N9 O9 Q9
so 9 x 11 = 99 seats out of 300+ seats.

I'm not trying to be snobby, just making it very clear for IncyWincy. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Thanks for your help. But I am maybe even more confused by the figures in your statement - on the one hand you say that F4 A4 really means there are 4 seats and therefore one First Class passenger in either subclass taking up a ticket will diminish both categories by 1 - this I understand. Yet on the other hand you effectively said that F4 A4 meant the airline intended to sell 8, I thought, on your logic, it would mean they intend to sell 4?



[This message has been edited by IncyWincy (edited 01-21-2003).]

[This message has been edited by IncyWincy (edited 01-21-2003).]

Hi,

My question in fact boils down to this - does F4 A4 mean that CX is withholding 8 (or 4) seats? According to fakecd's calculation, they are withholding 8 , always, since I havent come across any Galilep yield that has more than F4 A4. Now, why should CX hold so many seats? Is this not contrary to company interest?


Regards,



[This message has been edited by IncyWincy (edited 01-21-2003).]

Yes, the examples about Y9 etc I understood because the system does not yield more than one digit and 9 is the maximum. But is 4 the maximum for first class? If so, why?

Most airlines will only display 4 seats on First Class for immeidate sale on any CRS's. eg BA, CX, QF, SQ.

People who know what those codes mean and how to interpret them in the times of availabilities of flights, would know what to do.

Ever wonder what : F4 A1 J4 D2 I1 means?

Something like this: The smaller size of the cabin, and the unlikelihood that any single ticket-buyer would want more than 4 First tickets, makes it unnecessary for the CRS (reservation system) to determine precisely waht inventory is when inventory includes 4 or more seats remaining for sale.

There may also be a competitive intelligence issue here: CX would just as soon prevent its competitors from finding out its cabin loads, flight by flight, cabin by cabin, booking class by booking class. By obfuscating its data in this way, CX's competitors can't get as reliable information about CX's first loads -- can't tell whether CX has sold 0 tickets in First or 8. Yes, they'll still be able to tell whether CX has sold 8 versus 9 versus 10 versus 11 versus 12 (all assuming no overbooking), but it's not obvious what CX could do about that. In contrast, there's no particular cost to CX of hiding precise inventory when inventory is 4+.

As an economics student, I'm always on the lookout for good sources of data -- once wrote a major paper on the effect of Amazon.com's recommendation systems, measuring sales changes by changes in books' sales ranks. (Recall that Amazon publishes sales ranks for all its top-selling books.) If CX published full inventory data I could do a similar project on CX -- not sure what trends I would look for, but I'd see what I could see, and I'd have all their sales data (though only a proxy for revenue, as indicated by booking code). CX almost surely prefers that I not do this -- they'd rather commission any such analysis, not have it done by some random member of the public -- yet another reason for them not to provide more specific inventory data.

Hope this is helpful & interesting!

IncyWincy

I am not too up to speed on this, but if the aircraft is the new Airbus, I believe that there are only 8 FC seats total, unlike the 747

Does that mean the flight is selling "decently" in F/Biz cabin, so they'd rather sell off the remaining seats at the higher yielding subclasses such as full fare F/J?



[This message has been edited by fakecd (edited 01-21-2003).]

F4 A1 J4 D2 I1 means
at least 4 seat available for full fare F (maybe 7,8 or 12)
only 1 of these will be sold for the disc A class
therfore, F4A4 means >4 in both A&F, but the plane could have a max of 4 or 5 or 12 seats. (Not necessarily 8, 8 is, in fact, a meaningless number in this case)


similarly for J/D/I

if an A is sold, it becomes F4A0, or F3A0, depending on what max the original F was. the airline revenue management will examine the situation again, and may want to release more seats to A subclass.

F4A4 means at least 4 F seats avaialble, within this inventory at least 4 will be sold at subclass A. it does NOT mean there are 8 seats. an aircraft with max 4 seat can (in theory) be listed at F4A4


in the same token
Y9B9...S9V9
simply mean there are at least 9 (NOT 99) seats available for sale in all subclasses. if a V is sold. it will become
Y9b9......V8, or Y9B9....V9 still,
or
Y8B8....V8 in theory, depends on what the original Y/B/S max were.


hope this is clear
-------------

regarding why the max for A is 4, and that for JDIYB is 9. i think it has to do with the history and getting s common standard, and the fact that some planes in the past only had 4 F seats, or whatever reason. that the CRS agreed to a common standard (for different aircrafts)

the other reason could be that the airline does not want to publish the real max (?), so that they have the control on the last few seats

note for sabre/aa the max for J/Y is 7, instead of 9. my take is that 7 is exactly the max for 3 bits (0/1/...7). it is probably designed back when computer memory were so expensive



[This message has been edited by pegasus8228 (edited 01-22-2003).]

Figures like Y9 are NOT seats - but tickets. Airlines typically oversell flights, too. Y9 just means that you can buy at least 9 tickets:
a) it may be possible that you are the first customer for the flight and there are still e.g. >200 tickets available.
b) it may be possible that the plane is actually overbooked and therefore there's theoretically no SEAT any more available if all customers show up. The airline still sells tickets and expects last minute cancellations and no-shows so that at the time of departure number of tickets = number of seats (in an "optimal" case).

IncyWincy, I don't mean to be rude, but how old are you?

HI GB,

I am just about a third of a century. Why? I suppose my posts struck you as particularly juvenile ? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif