Why so much B?
 

I'm looking at my next week's DTW-LGW flight and it is listed as:

J3 C5 I0 Z0 Y3 B9 M6 H6 Q3 V0 L5 T3 K6

3 Y seats and 9 B seats? Then a coach bucket with 5, plus a full house in 6's and 3's.

Just to see what would happen, I went to reservations and asked for 4 one-way coach seats--and they were available, as a "B2US" fare.

Why would there be many more B seats than Y in availablilty (B is usually a subset of full Y availability)--and just how close to oversold might this flight actually "B"? :cool:

You also see that C > J on that flight.

B is the new Y. :D

>>>>B is the new Y.

Bour analbsis is positivelb uncannb.

I always thought on NW all First Class were subsets of P, all Business Class were subsets of J, and all coach were subsets of Y.

Three days next week don't follow that logic:

J4 C5 I0 Z1 Y9 B9 M9 H9 Q9 V9 L9 T9 K9

J6 C7 I0 Z4 Y9 B9 M9 H9 Q9 V9 L9 T9 K9

J3 C5 I0 Z0 Y3 B9 M6 H6 Q3 V0 L5 T3 K6

The other four days all follow the norm.


:p

I've also seen a lot of T3K9, even a few T0K9, on other routes. Not sure why. Anyone have any ideas?

Steve B.

Sale?

I've seen this sort of thing on rare occasions before, not sure if I've seen it on NW. If anyone could explain the logic I'd appreciate it as well.

I've also seen similar wierdness in the award calendar from time to time -- PerkSaver available but PerkPass not.

Perkpass uses Y bucket so it restricts perkpass awards.

Y upgrades to Z so that restricts full fare upgrades.

Some B fares have penalties for changes and others do not whereas Y is generally fully refundable.

Y fares are eligible for select seating where B fares arent...usually although ELite status makes that a semi non-issue at least for elites.


$0.02 Cha-ching

I see this all the time on the award calendar, but only for flights NOT on NW/CO/KL. Since DL/SU/AF/AM/etc don't offer the PerkPass option, all you'll ever see for them is PerkPass N/A.

Did you see PerkPass N/A but PerkSaver available on a NW/CO/KL flight?

Yes, it was a NW flight. It was few months ago so I don't remember the details, it was probably LAX-DTW-FRA or back since that was what I was looking for a the time. It was after they changed the search engine. I assumed that the two pull out of different fare buckets and somehow they had gotten "out of whack" -- much like the OP on this thread noticed strange fare bucket availability.

Is it possible that availability queries don't accurately reflect true availability? :eek:

Was waiting for my EUA on SJU-DTW. Showed P2F2 right after the PE EUA (I'm guessing cause it was P7F7 seven days out). Seat maps confimed this with two open FC seats (not that we should ever use seatmaps to confirm anything but our seat assignment).

Today was the 4 day window, my GE EUA cleared ^, BUT availability is still showing P2F2. Here's the kicker, seat maps shows 8 open seats in FC (plane is a 320). So, unless the same # of PNR cancellations = the number of GE's getting cleared, something is screwy...

Go figure.

Availability can be different when taking a flight, depending on whether you're connecting (and to or from what flights) or not, so looking up availability for one or the other doesn't always give the true picture, any more than the seat map. They're just tools that can help you see what's going on if you read between the lines, at least in terms of predicting upgrades. The availability is much better in telling you what the airline is willing to sell at that moment when looking up the connecting flights together, unless you're only traveling the one segment. For anything else, it's just a help.