Metanoia

I've been noticing that O-bucket (cheapest Business Saver) has been very difficult to find lately US West Coast-DXB, especially for flights less than 5 weeks out. There will be availability here and there but it'll disappear (my company has to send my travel through 19,586,194 levels of approval before I get to book).

In the past, there would be O7... then O6... and then it would deplete to 0 and that's it for the bucket. It would almost never come back.

Now, it seems that it's O7 and then O0, then back up to 7... probably velocity based, metering out a few cheap seats here and there based on how many seats sold through vs expected, and some magic mixed in. I now have to consider crappy routings like HNL-SEA-DXB or even position to IAD or IAH to get availability.

Anyone experience this on any other routes?

skywardhunter

Since you mention 5 weeks, it may be advance purchase requirement, often 30 days (which is just over 4 weeks). Then other saver fares with a lower advance purchase might open up later.

Metanoia

I think that's part of it but there's a lot of fares that are 7-10 day advance purchases but they seem to control advance purchase through the availability of the specific buckets. EK publishes and pulls a number of O class fares/fare basis codes for my routes (they show up in featured fares on the EK website) on a regular basis.

They seem to want to be able to "offer" cheap fares without them being actually available and play a high-low game with people - available one day and not available the next in order to prod people to buy NOW. I work in retail and used to work in price optimization so I can see some of that at play but never seen it this sophisticated with EK before.

Or perhaps, in the past when my company was not so bureaucratic and trusted us more, I would get two levels of approval (my boss & finance) and just buy (the cheap fare!) and leave it alone, rather than watch the fares change on a daily basis. Now I am highly at risk to go over budget with EK and end up flying CX or something...

chrisk1

business saver fares have gone up in price in asia , my usual route was always 1500gbp RT j , now 2100GBP rt j.
J only flight, no f.
and that's looking 3 days out, 15 days out, and 3 months out

edy4eva

I agree with the above and have experienced this with EK ex-Australia as well as with EY ex-Lebanon. Not long ago when trying to book MEL-DXB, it was showing 7, 1 seat booked with EK directly- the other through AMEX travel, and guess what, in that same minute it went to zero!! About 24 hours later it went back up to 7 that's despite AMEX travel holding a reservation in the higher fare bucket with a 5 day limit. I was monitoring availability on the QF codeshare but it was unaffected. So yes, EK seems to have implemented this revenue control.

With EY, the experience was quite frustrating albeit it was for 3 tickets booked directly - 1 as redemption, and 2 paid (redemption only bookable over the phone because the connection was overnight and did not show on the EY website). The minute the EY agent reserved the redemption seat and was about to take payment for taxes, the lowest paid fares got zeroed out. Ended up dropping the whole process, monitored the flights and that promo fare buckets never went back up despite the redemption seat showing as available right through to departure day.

Metanoia

I have a strange feeling that EK might have implemented a price optimizer that includes factors other than sell through/velocity - like query rate and source of query.

The following is CONJECTURE ONLY: For instance, if someone using AMEX travel (could be considered a "premium" site) queries a particular flight they take that into account when doing the next availability refresh (which, apparently can happen a max of 4 times a day) and may remove availability. Another site that is less premium might not have as much weight, while a large corporate travel agent might carry more weight in determining availability. I saw this happen a long time ago with Hotwire with hotels and there are rumblings around the 'net that it is happening as well but on a much larger scale. </conjecture>

Now, this is a true story: LAX-DXB was showing as sold out in "O" for most of the week I was thinking of traveling on and they pulled the promo fare. Availability went up for most of the week.

As much as I hate to admit it fares on BA (ugh) and CX to HYD are consistently lower. I'm price sensitive enough that if something doesn't work out I'll jump (those airlines are also AS partners, so no loss for me).

skywardhunter

Luckily for me EK still the most consistent and best timetable to HYD.

As to your conjecture, how can they only refresh availability 4 times a day? There's be tons of cases of sold out flights being bookable then

Metanoia

It's supposedly some limitation of the GDS - I think I meant that they adjust inventory levels (add or remove unsold seats to various buckets). And it appears it's hourly, I stand corrected

Ref: Airlines inching closer to dynamic pricing: Travel Weekly