BA restricts availability to view or sell seats on some CRS'
 

I have just found out that BA can restrict viewing and booking capabilitiy on other CRS's based on their location, and even where the CRS is based on linked to.

BA uses Amadeus. But it has direct link capability to restrict sales to certain TAs using other CRS's even, like SABRE.

So even if your TA or expertflyer shows availability, the location where you want your BA flight booked will show ZERO space or when you try to book it, it will come back as a waitlist.

For example, if you booked your reservation in say BKK, your PNR will have BKK's computer footprint on it already. Even though the seat is available between say LHR and NYC, as your orignial booking started from BKK, BA might consider it low-yield and each time you pull up your booking and try to book the 'available' seat, your PNR will display waitlist status.

Ok.. what does this have to do with Oneworld? Well, it will impact on your booking capabilities from various sources, as well as restrict sales from places that BA might consider low yield.

Even for award inventory... I was once able to find seats through asiamiles on BA flight, whereas on BAEC could not find the availability. You'd think it would be the other way round !

Is this news?

I've been aware that BA does all of these things as part of its market segmentation for more than a year now (maybe 2 years). This topic has at times come up on FT, though not so succinctly or eloquently put. I'm just a dumb passenger, not in the travel industry, but I've known about it; and that many other airlines (both in OW and elsewhere) also do similar things. Plus more routine yield restrictions, like B-C being zeroed out but lots of inventory for A-B-C (A being either a different city, different fare product or a different distribution channel). I think the various GDS computer systems added this capability, with Amadeus being maybe the first, and the airlines started using it. It is called something like ticket quota and was part of the e-ticket rollout (I guess the airlines could control how many thousands of tickets were issued by the physical paper ticket stock; with e-ticket they worried about someone issuing a few million tickets in a few seconds ... and that control capability was expanded for other purposes...).

BA has been taking advantage of the POS and Segment Marriage Logic/Journey Data for a while now (although they often use the former more aggressively than most other airlines) ...

There are a number of links that explain these technologies in the KVS Tool FAQ.

It is news when BA can restrict the above to CERTAIN TAs.. maybe to those who don't sell a lot of BA flights, or sell only discounted tickets.

Restricting based on location is one thing, that is inventory control. But to restrict sales, or prohibit viewing even based on any particular agency ID? Now that's sneaky ! And unfair...

Which is probably why BA went with Amadeus instead of Sabre. Sabre is restricted from such practices as it's based in US. Some US law prohibits it from this sort of anti-competitiveness.

Those are all attributes of the POS field:

Does the FT community have the collective smarts to outline how BA and the others are actually using these features? For instance, given that MRU is a cheap xONEx starting point, will that automatically taint that ticket with low availability throughout the trip? (That, to some, would reduce its worth and drive them to originating at a more expensive point with better seat availability.)

What happens if you reissue the ticket in a higher placed country? Will the ticket retain its original low-price taint, or will it graduate to the reissuing location's availability?

Isn't it a fact, based on several posts, that MRU is just not able to see the same availability that other BA offices see? I thought it was a given that MRU sees "less".

The POS criteria are related to the requester and not an attribute of the ticket. So different agents, web sites, companies, etc. will see potentially different availability for the same ticket (re-issue has nothing to do with it, or so I have been told). In theory every single availability request can be filtered with different rules, but in practice I think airlines do very little of that, and primarily use it to limit availability for some "deep discount" distribution channels prior to the original ticket issue (and rely on the fare rules to limit availability after issue). Again I have no inside knowledge of airline policy, this is just based on my own observations and reverse engineering of what various airlines appear to be doing.

Your question was answered over 2 years ago on FT, in Nov 2004 in this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...40#post3380501

Indeed, but all the chat I remember just has to do with MRU-LHR. I haven't heard anyone saying JNB-LHR was a problem, for example. But this thread makes it seem like BA's computer might offer limited A or D availability to an MRU-originated ticket, system-wide.

Not that that's particularly a crisis if BA is the only one playing that game - they tend to have decent competition on many of their "interesting" long-hauls. But again it sounds like the entire industry is moving in that direction, from the above posts.

I read it differently; I got the impression from the thread that BA's computer will offer limited availability to different points of sale, different travel agents, different agents, etc., irrespective of ticket origin. In other words, it's the origin of the availability inquiry that matters, not the place where the ticket was issued, or reissued.

I was reading Guy Betsy's original post, where he said:

Ah, I see what you mean. I still read that, however, as meaning that each time BKK pulls the booking the availability is lower.

The iidea of a second-rate (low availability) PNR remaining second-rate ("tainted") throughout your trip, no matter where in the world you try, just because it was made originally in a second-rate place, runs contrary to my experience, and I find it very hard to believe.

I suspect this might also break several European laws if this is the case. Remember that the EU's primary role is to ensure competition and fairness across the EU - forget all the mumbo jumbo spewed out by the UK Eurosceptic press.

Pretty sure it would fall foul of S African competition rules too. SAA was heavily fined for offering volume based incentives to TA's. This kind of selective favouring/disadvantaging sales points doesn't sound a whole lot different.