Simultaneous Submit to overcome Z1 inventory
Mar 29, 2019, 1:24 am
#31
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 1,880
My experience has been that many flight inventory systems (unlike event tickets, for example) honor fares as long as they are in your cart / you're checking out.
Case in point: I was able to book 6 tickets on United in a fare class that only had 2 left in inventory by using simultaneous sessions. In fact, I booked one of them 10 or 15 minutes after the other using Incognito mode (and in another browser session I confirmed that the fare class was no longer available).
The logic for this policy is simple: it's a frustrating user experience to be checking out for a flight and then be told that the price went up. At the point that a flight is in risk of being oversold, the price is so high that it's unlikely that there will be simultaneous bookings.
There are, of course, exceptions. Award inventory, for example, is notoriously stingy.
Case in point: I was able to book 6 tickets on United in a fare class that only had 2 left in inventory by using simultaneous sessions. In fact, I booked one of them 10 or 15 minutes after the other using Incognito mode (and in another browser session I confirmed that the fare class was no longer available).
The logic for this policy is simple: it's a frustrating user experience to be checking out for a flight and then be told that the price went up. At the point that a flight is in risk of being oversold, the price is so high that it's unlikely that there will be simultaneous bookings.
There are, of course, exceptions. Award inventory, for example, is notoriously stingy.
Mar 29, 2019, 5:25 am
#32
Original Poster
Join Date: Feb 2000
Posts: 6,545
My experience has been that many flight inventory systems (unlike event tickets, for example) honor fares as long as they are in your cart / you're checking out.
Case in point: I was able to book 6 tickets on United in a fare class that only had 2 left in inventory by using simultaneous sessions. In fact, I booked one of them 10 or 15 minutes after the other using Incognito mode (and in another browser session I confirmed that the fare class was no longer available).
The logic for this policy is simple: it's a frustrating user experience to be checking out for a flight and then be told that the price went up. At the point that a flight is in risk of being oversold, the price is so high that it's unlikely that there will be simultaneous bookings.
There are, of course, exceptions. Award inventory, for example, is notoriously stingy.
Case in point: I was able to book 6 tickets on United in a fare class that only had 2 left in inventory by using simultaneous sessions. In fact, I booked one of them 10 or 15 minutes after the other using Incognito mode (and in another browser session I confirmed that the fare class was no longer available).
The logic for this policy is simple: it's a frustrating user experience to be checking out for a flight and then be told that the price went up. At the point that a flight is in risk of being oversold, the price is so high that it's unlikely that there will be simultaneous bookings.
There are, of course, exceptions. Award inventory, for example, is notoriously stingy.
Mar 29, 2019, 10:31 am
#33
Join Date: Mar 2016
Posts: 1,884
If we're being pedantic, the word is "nit", which is the tiny egg of a louse. Nit-picking is very fine, detailed, laborious work. In common usage, "nitpicking" is a derogatory word describing the act of looking for small or unimportant errors or faults, especially in order to criticize unnecessarily.
Mar 29, 2019, 10:42 am
#34
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Seattle
Programs: DL DM; Hyatt Globalist; etc
Posts: 540
So far, we've got:
- Three pages of people arguing whether this should be possible
- One person who says it's possible on HA
- Lots of good reasons why it won't work (ACID, CAP theorem, database transactions, etc)
- Anecdotal evidence that airlines will honor the fares even if there's no availability if it's in your cart and you're trying to check out quickly
.. but nobody has actually tried? @Colin it sounds like it's time to put your money where your mouth here is and let us know
- Three pages of people arguing whether this should be possible
- One person who says it's possible on HA
- Lots of good reasons why it won't work (ACID, CAP theorem, database transactions, etc)
- Anecdotal evidence that airlines will honor the fares even if there's no availability if it's in your cart and you're trying to check out quickly
.. but nobody has actually tried? @Colin it sounds like it's time to put your money where your mouth here is and let us know