J Special Disappeared
 

:(

Wanted to book my mom a surprise trip for her very special birthday and anniversary to IST.

I checked for J Special and viola! It was there. YES! I thought. ^:)

One hour later when I had all I needed, I go to book it and it was gone. :(

Flights are in July.

Any idea if it could come back? J Flex is pretty steep for two seats for me.

Thanks.

From where (DUR/CPT?) to IST?

What browser are you using? Try another browser and if the fare is back, then it was probably cookies blocking you from seeing the higher fare.

LOL?

Many specials had book by dates of 2/1

My thoughts exactly!

There were rumors a couple of years ago that new dynamic pricing engines would use cookies to track whether a user who was searching for fares would be more likely to book if they saw prices were going up between price quotes to give the impression of scarcity - an extension of the practice where if an airline is seeing a lot of search activity on a particular route/date they would increase fares because they had hard data on increased demand.

These days, you don't really need to use cookies to identify users as browser fingerprinting is arguably a better technique, but the idea still stands.

http://apex.aero/2015/08/17/airlines-dynamic-pricing
http://lifehacker.com/5973689/how-we...an-do-about-it
http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel...story/2021993/

Famously, Orbitz was offering Apple users higher prices than PC users because people who use Apple products are generally wealthier than non-Apple households, as well as having certain purchasing preferences:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...88822667325882

However in the EK case, I think it's much more to do with the restricted availability of Specials, rather than Dynamic Pricing.

Will it happen? For sure, but not until the days of simple buckets and inventory in a CRS is updated... The explanation is always quite a simple one for when people see this. When people are creating dummy bookings/shopping around, in order for the airline or OTA to display a fare, it has to hold that seat immediately until a) its purchased or b) the time that is configured in the CRS back end to release a seat from a transaction that has no finalised. If there was only one seat available in said bucket and the consumer 'shops' that fare but doesn't complete the transaction, chances are if they are looked for it again within a short period of time, that seat will still be being held by the previous transaction. ET, I know you know this, but others on here do not, hence the continual opinions that these evil cookies are increasing fares.

As someone in Revenue Management, I would love to be able to do this, I could make my airline much much more money, but alas, we are still using 70's technology which is unlikely to change in the near term for the majority of global ticket sales. The first carriers that we see doing this will be those that do not use the incumbent CRS's thereby circumventing old technology.

I know the concept and it is definitely fun to read about it every time there's a new masterpiece of journalism around airline pricing.

I can assure you that this can't be done with the vast majority of pricing engines around and it is most likely not implemented on any of the major full service carrier website.

There are ways to add charges on the front end but it's a very risky business.

Indeed, too much legacy software out there for any airline to do it - not to mention all the costs with fare distribution!

I could sense a marketing campaign by direct providers of inventory against online travel agencies (or should I say, commission sinks :D) highlighting the fact that airlines/hotels can't/don't do it, but the OTAs might as they are much freer to add additional charges into their quoted prices. :D

Agreed - it's one of those things where the conspiracy sounds more sexy (and believable if you don't know what happens behind the curtain) than reality!

Indeed... a previous outfit I was with tried... complete and utter disaster... the consumer board of the country went so far as to say it was bordering on illegality!

Hi guys. Just an update:

I found an amazing deal on QR. R45,000 for 2 J seats DUR-IST return. That's roughly $2,800 for TWO J return seats!

I'm not worried about the miles because at that fare I'd be happy with 0.

QR seems very well priced out of DUR. And I'm hoping that my parents enjoy their flight and the J terminal at DOH.

QR has some crazy Business deals, Europe to SYD 2500$ return

keep an eye on Etihad, especially J tickets on EY metal sold by their partners. I picked up a $1050 fully flexible J return on Etihad JNB - BOM ticketed by Air Seychelles as a codeshare (just completed the outbound). With 150% mileague accrual and no cancellation or change fee you can't beat that. (It was R17,000 btw).

I managed to price a similiar one last year in December for travel in April!

QR seems to be killing EK in J fares ex-SA.

Only problem is both of them are crazy for J to LHR, which is where I fly to most frequently. 😞

Now I need 3 cheap J seats to BNE in December. Let's see who wins between EK/EY/QR.