MH yield games?
 

I've been looking to buy a OW fare from KUL-BKK and MH was offering the best fares for the latter half of January. Fares started off a few weeks ago at MYR 28 and went up to MYR 56 (not factoring in the taxes and fuel surcharges that add about MYR 229) but I missed these promo fares as I had not settled in dates.

Fares went up to MYR 142 and stayed there for a week and then when up to, for most flights on that day I was interested in, MYR500-700 and these were not full flexible fares. Much more than what I wanted to pay since I could get RJ BC for USD226 which is what I ended up buying.

Fares dropped back down to MYR 142 for almost all flights.

So is MH playing pricing games?

Probably but don't all airlines do this?

Not as much as this.

Someone might have booked a few seats but failed to have it ticketed within the timeframe, hence the lower fares are released for sale. Happens all the time.

PG has been playing even more egregious yield games on some of their routes. It's maddening as hell but in the end is just costing them (my) income.

The base fares in my example went from MYR 142 to MYR 500-700 for mos of the 5 flights of the day, before falling back to MYR 142. I guess MH could have very few fare classes but that is a pretty big jump for unticketed flights.

Decided we'd get better value out of RJ BC in the end so it costed MH.

On Dec 19 and 20 PG, weeks out, had nothing below K fares, about $80 o/w higher than H, for all four flights exPNH; K, M, and Y was showing 7's* across the board, but everything lower was zeroed. Every flight on the 18th and 21st were 7's in all fare classes.

On it's own one could argue these lower fares were purchased, except this isn't an outlier nor did any of those high fares budge for the 10 days I kept my eye on them. All of the three highest fares stayed at 7s until flight time.

*7 is the highest availability numbers I can pull up for PG fare classes.

MH codeshare and yield share with TG on this route and everything is also determined by dates. Towards end of Jan is also getting close to the lunar New Year period. RJ by all accounts is not as affected due to their origin and termination being AMM via BKK and they can offer lower Fifth Freedom fares between KUL and BKK.