Boony1970

Ever since the "Z" inventory was changed to "OP" inventory, it seems there are almost daily (sometimes hourly) changes.
I have been tracking several flights on EF to attempt to use SWU's, and have decided there is no rhyme or reason to any of it.
It used to be that 9 seats might show up, then slowly decline over several days. Now 9 seats may show up in the morning, and by the afternoon there are zero - then in the evening 9 seats again. I rarely, if ever, get notification emails any longer.
And just my luck, the variances have never shown up on the full round trip I need...
All the while, no seats are showing being occupied. I know EF has had some issues that require refreshing searches to get correct results, but this seems beyond that.
I realize there must be some sort of calculation being done in the background that would add or remove availability - but this just seems ridiculous.
Has DE changed how these are made available? Is it a glitch in EF?
Or is it just unexplained nonsense. One more hurdle to utilize already difficult SWU's.

HongKonger

I have noticed the same thing. I stopped even bothering to reset certain alerts of EF as they were notifying me twice a day, once for the appearance and once for the disappearance. Of course the flights I really want have remained at a big fat goose egg for weeks.

Boony1970

Its almost like there is a DE sensor to detect my searches & desired flights and remove them. Always tons of availability on either side of my requested R/T - but not my days...

FlyAO2

I'm finding this to be the case with paid inventory too. I was looking for a NYC-ATL flight..within 48 hours V inventory on one flight went from 6 to 0 to 7 back to 0.

Moral of the story, always make sure you check your flight again for the next day to see if you cancel and rebook and stick it to revenue mgmt

MSPeconomist

I've been seeing inventory fluctuations the day before and day of travel as I try to watch my travel to see how the same fare class requirement will affect my SDC opportunities.

FlyAO2

any insight as to your analysis?

MSPeconomist

One surprise was seeing something like Y5 B0 M0 S1 rest all zero, again raising the question of whether the rule is exact fare class or same or lower fare class availability. Otherwise, unless I saw roughly Y > 6 everything below M was zero. There were some Y9 segments with something like 7 available in ALL fare classes, including E. Below about L, availability didn't depend on the specific deep discount fare class.