Load Management Issues - MEL-SIN
 

As Inspector Clouseau used to say, "something very fishy is going on..."

Travelling MEL-SIN today on my regular hop, booked in revenue J. Checked loads all week and was indifferent about upgrading, perhaps quietly hoping for an op-up if Y was oversold and they pushed a lot of now lonely Golds up into the promised land.

EF still showed 7's across the board across most Y classes. J had, according to EF, about 13 unfilled seats. F was showing only 1 out of 8, which is normal for this sector

Tried on the website yesterday to upgrade - no dice. No Z inventory available. Was somewhat perplexed. Decided to call in. Lovely Indian call centre agent thanked me profusely for being a Plat member (I think they could tone this down a little bit ;) ) but then gave me a thousand apologies because he could not confirm the upgrade.

"How many are booked in F?" I asked
"One" he beamed
"Really"
"Why cant I upgrade then?"
"I am not sure, let me talk with a supervisor" and then gushed again at me being a Platinum member

Moments later, more apologies but still no luck. He told me to enquire at the airport. There goes the benefits of Platinum if you ask me.

I forgot about it until today (day of departure)

Checked EF this morning. Still Y seats available, still J seats available, and only one poor sod in F

Called again. Agent told me Y was oversold - despite what EF stated. I then tried to make a Y booking online. No worries. Gave me a Saver fare. Then tried a Flex fare. Yep, could book that too. And as you would expect, revenue seats were available in J and F, with EF showing A4, P4, J7, C7 etc

This is the first time I haven't been able to upgrade on this sector. I asked the lounge person to see if I could upgrade. He said yes, I then asked how many in F, he said ONE. Which is somewhat confusing.

Something is going on in Inventory Management land at EK. Why would they hold back 7 F seats? You couldnt upgrade to J either, despite J still having 10+ seats available. With J, I can understand them holding inventory back a whisker if they know Y is oversold - but this is also the first time I have seen EF be way off in its data.

I am now going to spend the flight constructing an arm waving email to Skywards in Dubai. Wish me luck.

I have an identical situation on my DXB-BOM leg next week. Only one seat occupied in EF and no Z inventory available for upgrade on a 777.

My best wishes!!! I've just been scanning EF for both Z and D inventories but they seem to almost non existent, except on routes either served by 2+ 380s or 332s.

The other thing that has been really bugging me since last month is the Indian call center where EK seems to have outsourced all of its voice and email customer support. These guys are completely clueless, don't seem to have any authority to do anything, and the usual attitude is that "you can actually view/ do all of that from the web." I feel that I can now do much more through EF than by calling up the call center.

I agree and wouldn't mind adding my name to your email :) It is ridiculous that the flex award in F has become almost an impossibility. I want to change to a flight that shows P4A4 and 7s across all remaining fare buckets (including D), no seats selected in F, is 4 months out and all I get is it's closed for waitlisting on Z!

What the!?

Did you end up upgrading? and was it a complimentary or did use your miles?

I've spent years reading these forums and this is the issue that has got me worked up enough to finally join!

I regularly travel SYD-BKK and since 1 April all Z inventory has vanished. I wonder if Qantas has anything to do with this...

1 seat in June (4th..?) magically appeared while talking to the call centre today about lack of inventory! Waiting for an email from Dubai. Haha.

Something fishy indeed.

Nothing new in that story unfortunately, happens to me on 80% of my flights. My last 3 sectors:

DXB-JED tried to buy 2 F revenue ticket, no chance sold out completely, I end up on a saver reward tickets with only 4/14 in F

Return flight, only flex revenue J available, flight 10/42 including 1 staff

NRT-DXB J overbooked to the brim, no chance of a revenue seat, on day of flight around 50/76 on the 380

No logic unless EK travellers are really the spontaneous last minute type

I'm trying to buy 2 tickets to MRU from DXB in October - only flex J available and its 12,000 odd dirhams no matter when you go....

There must be some saver J around? I don't need the extra miles but want to fly J for as reasonable a cost as possible.

I didn't upgrade in the end - as I had 6A and was quite happy. F went out 1 out of 8. There was 1 seat spare in J, meaning about 12 op-ups from Y. Interestingly, 3 Plats in J (at least thats what I could see after a quick glance at the manifest).

I've written to DXB. Lets see what happens...

As requested - good luck!

There is something odd going on with EK generally I think. Try this one:

I tried to book NCL-DXB-SIN-DXB-LON today and was told on the phone that NCL-DXB had no J seats left so I could do Y on NCL-DXB and then F on DXB-SIN (as it was 'cheaper to do that than go in J from DXB-SIN).

OK, I thought but decided to try from MAN instead of NCL and got the same problem. No J. Only F.

HOWEVER! ExpertFlyer shows J4C4I4 on both the NCL and MAN flights I wanted.

So I then decided to price it up myself online (the reason I hadn't before is that I was on the phone to the agent about cancelling another flight I had booked so thought I'd get them to price out the itinerary instead of doing it online). Sure enough, when I go to do a RT NCL-SIN rather than flying back into London it allows me to price in J all the way for substantially cheaper than doing Y+F or F/F from MAN!

Bizarre.

Any news yet?

I flew SIN-MEL on Monday night (2240 from SIN) and the flight was quite empty - numerous rows with only 1 person in there (10 across 773ER - A6-ECG)

I'm quite surprised as this is the first EK flight i've taken that wasn't jammed full of people (Normally flying to Amsterdam, Auckland or London Heathrow from Sydney)

No Y->J points upgrades available via EK website even though there were seats spare.

It doesn't really bother me to be honest... the Y cabin crew were extremely friendly and very attentive.

Oh, this is my first post too. This forum is full of great information :)

andrewk, welcome to FT and to the EK Forum

Cheers Zol :)

Welcome andrewk! And good luck trying to understand EK's processes...

SIN-MEL and vice versa is a prime last minute full fare 'J on the day' route. As such any prime revenue generating set is saved for this purpose. Holidays are the only time it gets 'opened up', but is usually full in any case. There used to be load/performance issues out of SIN, but these days it is mostly rev potential at the higher end that gets the Rev Man types salivating.

EDIT: last minute cargo is also a huge revenue source on the route, and weight is also saved. It is not uncommon to find last minute changes to load and fuel as a result.