WilcoRoger

Interesting phenomenon

Coming back from TLL - I had a ticket on AY108, friend couldn't get it so he got a ticket on the later flight. At HEL in the morning tried to rebook or waitlist, already the waitlist was closed, with 2 pax overbooked on AY108.

Tried the same in TLL, same situation, flight overbooked, pax on waitinglist, etv. At the same time, though, you could still book a ticket on finnair.com for the very same flight for 132€? ...?

Would it be a sly pax to book this flight anyway and hope for IVDB or VDB and related payments from AY?

Had it been me only, I'd have of course bought the ticket and either got home earlier or have netted some money from AY for DB

(the ticket for the later flight was flexible, so if one could have get on the earlier flight, it would have been easy to cancel, rebook for October, whatever)

(and yes, AY 108 was 100% full - I don't know if there was any (I)VDB involved)

But why on earth AY is still selling tickets 50 minutes before departure for an already overbooked flight??

intuition

Probably a clever move on behalf of the "world class" revenue management AY employed.

But seriously, it is not a one time issue, AY is a repeat offender so this is either intended or a major system flaw. Like I've said many times before, I doubt it to be good business. So if it is a flaw, maybe it is the seat guarantee perk that is acting up? Perhaps the online system always, regardless of booking situation, shows some YBH availability?

OH-LGG

It is not.

Booking must be made 4 hrs before scheduled departure time. I just tried AY 108 departing today 2:55 pm and:

WilcoRoger

Yesterday it would've sold it to me at 13:55 - I went until I chose the flight but not further.

theBro

I have experienced the opposite. Flight was supposed to be full, thus I bought a Pro ticket for the next day (Saturday) and asked to be moved to the Friday flight as Plat perk. And to my surprise, the Friday flight had actually plenty of empty seats. (Which was good from my point of view, as no-one was left behind because of me.)

Often1

Most carriers overbook. An oversale does not occur until more properly ticketed passengers show up for boarding than there are seats. RM calculates how many seats can likely be sold without an oversale ocurring. The incentive to sell walk up seats is pretty high, even if once in a while that means an IDB.

If you want to pay what s likely full fare or close to it at T-4, someone on a deep discount or an award will, if necessary, take the hit. That transaction may be a net loss, but not often.

remymartin

I have also seen ay site sell tickets even after check-in has closed. I have not gone to payment form, so cannot confirm/deny if it works or not.

Justinus

Finnair could easily reduce the oversold problem, if it still was ready to sell oneway tickets to reasonable prices - just as it did only 10 years ago and still does at least sometimes ex-Asia.

Now within the European flights many are obliged to buy return tickets and do not bother to cancel to return, as there is no advantage of doing so.

I have never understood this Finnair-does-not-sell-oneway-tickets policy.

intuition

Well, that would remove one of the reasons why they think they must overbook. However, no-shows are not the entire picture - there is a deliberate undersell-J-oversell-Y-and-upgrade strategy. Even if a flight has normal amount of no-shows, there will still be a lot of op-ups, even some VDBs and IDBs.

WilcoRoger

This haven't occured to me, but so true!

SFO777

Lufthansa is another serial one way fare abuser. I've purchased a number of cheap LH European roundtrips and simply didn't fly or cancel the return flight.

Flythe96flag

Isn't LH group introducing a new, more reasonable one-way pricing? Or was it just Swiss, I don't remember.

Would like to see something similar on AY. (One can always hope )

WilcoRoger

Last week: AY HEL-PRG for September (oneway) 848€ in Y - seriously?? More expensive than a return to NYC or BKK? Guess, did I by it?

Courmisch

I think a number of airlines follow such pricing policy. Some months ago, there was a story in French news about a failed wannabe jihadist: he was denounced by his travel agent for insisting on buying a one-way MRS-IST even though MRS-IST-MRS was cheaper...

My take on this is that the airline hopes to make more money that way.
They know that most people will buy RT tickets (and that travel agencies explicitly promote doing so). And then a very few clueless rich folks will pay the premium one-way fare. It might well be that the small premium for the RT ticket, and the huge premium for the 1W ticket offset the loss of business to the (limited) competition.