Andy70

So, the logical conclusion from all this would be that with saparate reservations both uppgrades would have cleared?
Thinking such an early reservation and requests You as Lumo and MRS Kauppias (gifted Gold?) would both most probably be in front of the list…

QUOTE=kauppias;35039376]Just a data point I am one of 2 LUMOs on board. In J there are 6 golds and 3 silvers.


So it is either basics silvers or golds that trumped the upgrade list 🤷‍♂️😁😁

I did Survive in Y, the experience sure does make one appreciate even ay J 😁😁[/QUOTE]

seldomrfly

It used to work, I had a U2 cleared back in December. But what has changed? Continous pricing. 1+1+1+1+1 instead of buckets with n seats. So I think we need to keep an eye on this, especially the "how seats are released by rev" section. Ofc all is speculations based on Kauppias case but still worth monitoring.

SuloL

Without taking a stance on your specific situation, but more of as a continuation of my previous theory, I think your instance and that of Kauppias might not be mutually exclusive. Continuing the guessing work I did before, I would assume that there is functionality to upgrade multiple people too on the waitlist. This would be too difficult to not build into the functionality, as it's such a core component (the components being essentially clearing one seat for one booking, or multiple seats for one booking, and the rest is just looping these over and implementing priority rules).

Therefore, I would extend my previous hypothesis, that the algorithm could work as such, that if the system doesn't find any booking to assign U1 to, but revenue management data tells the system that there's plenty of space in J, the algorithm then adds +U1 to the last search loop, and loops again. It continues shifting through the waitlist and adding as many seats as revenue management allows it, if it can't find people to upgrade with less seats.

This would effectively mean that parties of >1 will never be upgraded before solo travellers. Yet, parties of >1 may still be upgraded automatically, if there are enough seats and there's no smaller groups to assign them to in that 1+1+1+1+1 fashion.

The coincidence with AY's implementation of continuous pricing is definitely worthy of a consideration too, though.

------------

Then, another unknown that came to mind. We don't know how priority on waitlists is implemented between upgrades and full awards. I.e. are they even on an equal baseline, or is one favored over another. This could also lead to interesting outcomes. But I'll disregard this for now, as I would assume that the public outside of FT may not be big on waiting until t-37 to confirm their longhaul flights.

intuition

While there is logic to that, it would also mean that the waitlist robot not only is designed to handle waitlist processing but also to make rev. management decisions. Generally developers and system designers want to keep stuff "clean" and not mix multiple actions, because it so easily breaks and is difficult to maintain and extend.

Example: you wouldn't want to create a MakeMeDinner() function that not only prepares and cook your food but also orders the groceries. Sure, you'd never run out of groceries, but you would lose control over procurement. You'd end up with a hefty bill for filet of beef the system ordered while the user of MakeMeDinner() is getting fat.

I am not certain AY developers would think anything through like that though, but I'm still sceptical. My main argument goes like this: If I were rev management I would have vetoed such an implementation. Because the new goal for rev management is to monetize upgrades and having a robot "in the wild" that can release and consume U on its own spells disaster for that goal. Sure, the robot is supposed to follow some "safe" logic but I would still veto it, because if I am responsible for revenue I'd make dämn sure no one else has the key to the warehouse with the gooddies.

So my take is still that the waitlist robot only processes watilists against existing U and that rev management is in 100% control of U.
Rev mngmnt may very well have a algorithm of their own, scanning loadfactors and potentially releasing U and even could be making a call to the waitlist robot once U has been released. But remember that there are steps before that:

1. How many seat will stay unsold with current load, current estimated demand and current pricing strategy?
If answer is >0, next question is
2. How many seats do we estimate can be sold as upgrade
If that answer is 0, only then would U be considered


Don't get med wrong, your hypothesis could very well be right and as a customer I'd prefer if waitlist clearing had some actual influence over number of seast released. A long and/or "prominent" waitlist is a demand that should be taken into consideration. Selleing seats to tier members for points/vouchers is also an important sale to make.
It is just that revenue managent couldn't care less about voucher/points upgrades/awards. If ten seats are unsold and no one is willing to upgrade for money, the plane can fly with 10 seats empty aswell, it wouldn't affect revenue managemant one single bit.

SuloL

Yeah, totally agree with you, perhaps cut a few corners and worded that part poorly. My intention was to convey an assumption that there's a separate process for determining whether U is released (and how many) at those t-37s and the other checkpoints, and that this information would somehow be communicated or fed to the program processing the waitlist, and then the program runs until all seats within its constraints are given out or no more takers. Not assuming that the revenue management input to this would be automatic either, as I believe there to be a good deal of manual work involved with RM, just taking a look at how AY constrains awards on holiday seasons despite empty flights, certain routes, aircrafts etc.

ffay005

I would also tend to believe that the process of releasing U is not automatic. One resaon for this is that the robot is supposed to check the upgrades at certain checkpoints. If the whole system were automatic, why would this be necessary? It could be an ongoing process.

Instead, it sounds to me as if these checkpoints include revenue management manually adding U inventory, and then the robot starts processing.

We have also had cases where U pops up but the robot does nothing and then the customer contacts AY and asks to be cleared. Which sounds strange indeed.

Post Scriptum

Upgrade could not be confirmed is always so nice email to receive So one more datapoint of waitlisting 5+ months (4 pax, including 2 plat) and then no-go. But with 50% success rate I still live with this outcome, however of course value of loyalty decreases if this would drop below 50%.

work2fly

While I don't know if it makes a difference, I split my current itinerary of 4 into 2 itineraries of 2 pax to improve chances of the wait-list clearing.

However, the last time I did this, I was able to check-in all four of us at the same time, so I'm not sure if we were really decoupled. J was full long before T-37 so no way of knowing how the split itineraries might have helped our chances.

Post Scriptum

Yeah, definitely as long as family has two plats, 2+2 is likely preferred option but do not know will it fly if other one is only gold. On one hand we got full 4 tix upgrade on outbound on same pnr so, I guess the question is will splitting increase outcome from 50% or not. So better not be poor and book saleJ.

mpkz

Just had an experience that highlights both the logicality and design flaws of the system. I had waitlisted myself for HKG-HEL a while ago. Lumo flying on economy flex. At t-37, the waitlist was denied - business was completely full (not seats sold on AY website). So I board a plane in BKK to fly to HKG (reverse routing of the old MD-11 Asia flights) and upon landing in HKG, notice that one ticket can now be bought on AY's website. Btw I am using AY's website since I don't know how to use ExpertFlyer for anything except seatmaps.

So I ask Platinum WhatsApp about the seat and they say not possible, they cannot guarantee catering so I have to ask at HKG check-in. Okay, I go to check-in about 30 mins after it opens (basically straight from my BKK flight) and they say that someone did a paid upgrade for that seat, so not possible. But ask at the gate. I check Expertflyer for a seatmap and notice 2 free seats, which remain free until check-in closes. So I sense an opportunity, I guess these were no-shows. I ask at the gate, and they tell me I am highest priority for an opup but if I want to guarantee it I should use my voucher (Y is completely full on ExpertFlyer except like 3 seats, so opup seems possible). Since I have a gazillion vouchers and points, I do what I would not normally do and use my voucher there.

So all's well that ends well. Had I not been following seat maps and availability closely, this would have seemed like Finnair being intentionally dumb and not upgrading a Lumo despite availability. However, my intuition is that only the biggest whiners here will actually see any fault in any of Finnair's actions, at least from a business perspective. They denied the waitlist because the cabin was full and sold the seat available at check-in to someone paying probably 600-700 euros instead, which once again, my intuition tells me only the biggest whiners would consider a bad business decision. Then, with 2 no-shows, they upgraded me at the gate.

On the other hand, the fact that the waitlist was ended at t-37 meant that they risked opuping me without receiving anything. If they had kept the waitlist until the closing of checkin, they would have been guaranteed my voucher instead of risking an opup. And without tracking the situation proactively, I would have found it as absurd as my previous 2-class opup on a flight where my waitlist was denied (though that one had a few more empty seats in business, I guess there was a misconnect).

ffay005

if their perspective is to look at how much revenue they got each day, then yes, they made the right business decision for that particular day. However, I don’t think I am alone when I claim that the whole point of handing out upgrade vouchers to your most loyal customers is to strengthen that loyalty and to bring in a lot more than 600 EUR as months and years go by. That 600 EUR could have cost AY a lot more if they had p***ed off a customer and lost their loyalty.

It is very shortsighted to value 600 EUR today over 6000 EUR next month or 60.000 EUR next year…

mpkz

This is where I point out that none of the "I'll reduce my flying on AY because my voucher got denied" has actually credibly reduced their activity here for longer than a few months. Let's see if kauppias sticks to his redemptions only strategy, Ed Size and Intuition were booking AY less than 2 months after being denied.

At least to me the idea that denied upgrades would cause me to lose loyalty will be more relevant when competing programs start offering anything close to AY's number of upgrades.

edit: and the upgrade was technically sold while there was no waitlist (which is a problem related to the waitlist ending at t-37)

ffay005

Well, there is quite a lot of room between "I will never book AY again" and "I fly AY every week and love every minute of it". If a previously AY-loyalist ditches his loyalty in favour of another airline or a strategy where he always books what's cheapest regardless of airline, or whatever else, it does not necessarily mean he will stop flying AY altogether. Perhaps his annual flight spending used to be 60.000 EUR, of which 55.000 on AY, and in future, it's still 60.000 but only 10.000 on AY.

mpkz

Right, not sure we've even seen many signs of them moving their spend over, other than maybe kauppias who seems to have some crazy spend last year on two alliances

The bigger point, which has been discussed here ad nauseam, is that no airline offers guaranteed upgrades other than ones that sell them with dynamic pricing or for super elites (like AF-KL Plat Ultimate, which gives a whopping 2 sectors guaranteed in exchange for the kind of spend that you can only achieve by flying longhaul J round trips more than once per month). QR is just as happy to offer cash upgrades on flights where they deny QCredit ones.

work2fly

Without an understanding of how the wait-list is processed, we're all just guessing. I think it's telling that FinnairPlus hasn't shared this information as promised. The information is probably too embarrassing to share, eg the system is broken.

Every business should want customers to understand how a published benefit works. This builds loyalty, which is the whole point of a loyalty program.