That's such an interesting concept. Avoiding giving away the seats for too cheap. I mean....I get it, sort of. But, in my mind.....if you have a dozen seats empty, as in your case.....and you sell even half of them at $600. That's $3,600. And, it's absolutely achievable to sell them all at that price point. But...if you are asking $1,100, you may only sell 1 or 2 seats....or maybe none. Clearly, $3,600 is better.

It's hard for me to fathom that $3,600+ isn't worth it, and it would somehow be more important to stick to your vision of not giving away the seats for too cheap, rather than....you know....making money.

Especially when airlines shrink seats and charge for every little tiny thing in an effort to eke out any potential profit possible...it's hard for me to believe they would look an easy profit in the face and say...."Eh, nah."

The flip side to that is if every available seat is always made available for a relatively cheap'ish upgrade for cash or instruments it will start to cannibalise outright business bookings, and the upgrade fees paid will not cover the lost revenue. Once airlines create an expectation of being able to book Y but easily fly J their yield is not going to be positively affected.

That's a good point, but...misplaced, I think.

The people who can afford to pay 7K+ for a business class flight are always going to pay 7K for a business class flight. And the people who can afford to book economy will book economy. There may be people in between that could go either way, but I would say that's not very common.

This line of thinking is that there are people out there saying, "You know, I can afford to pay for business class, but why don't we book economy and upgrade in order to save some money?" I just don't think that's happening, or going to happen. Don't get me wrong....I wouldn't be surprise if that is the airlines' logic. But, to turn down an easy profit, on the thought that wealthy travelers are going to learn the "hack" and penny pinch.....seems a bit silly.

It is not silly, look at the US carriers and look at SQ or NH. As the extremes of the scale.

I couldn’t have done the expounding work any better. People on geek’s forums tend to forget that, outside platforms such as FT, most folks couldn’t care less about the above (and indeed similar) logics, they would just book what suits them in terms of $, schedule, corporate contracts and so forth. Joe Bloggs just wants to get from A to B (whether with BA, “low-cost” or on a private jet that’s a different matter…). I work for a major pharma business with several people often on the move for different reasons, just a couple (and they are both on FT, funnily enough) I spoke to throughout the years is clued up about mileage runs to Bogotá via Sofia and Istanbul, “Easy-peasy to get a gold card with Aegean or Turkish”, status match and you name it, 99% want to fly direct and with no faffing around, including when they go away on their jollies.

G

Thanks.

It just feels like the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Lots of companies do it, Disney is a prime example.

I just don't think there is going to be a surge of business class clientele booking at economy and hoping to upgrade....certainly not enough that it's worth it to turn down easy profits.

Anyone know how to force the system to show Bidding options? I can't seem to find the button under manage booking. I'm only seeing that I must enter my passport details (which I did).

Flight is JFK-CPH, booked in PY. Looking for J. Flight leaves in two weeks.

What happens with the money you have spent on meals/seats etc if you win a bid with SK?
I have actually never bidded on J from Go.

Use this link, replacing XXXXXX with your booking number and NAME with your last name:
https://www.flysas.com/travel/upgrad...E&market=lu-en

Fantastic Thanks!

A bit more info on the tracking of bids for a roundtrip CPH-BOS-CPH next month. See post 376 above.

Watching the minimum bids for Economy to Plus (SEK or points) and Economy to Business (SEK or points) for bot outbound and inbound shows the following.

Screengrabbed in three parts for ease of viewing. Note the countdown of days until departure.

On at least three of the Tuesdays since I started watching, minimum bids have dropped for one day, perhaps in line with a weekly adjustment of all fares to stimulate demand. These have all been reversed within 24hrs.

Minimum bids don't appear to be dropped and raised at the same time each day, and they can change during the course of a certain day. I don't check these minimum bids at the same time every day, so it's possible I'm missing info about when they change.

One important observation from this data: in this exercise, we can see that minimum bids always change for both Economy to Plus and Economy to Business at the same time. This must be happening irrespective of the actual loads, since it's highly unlikely that the 2 cabins (C: 22, W: 12) are filling up at the same rate. So presumably these variations in minimum bid are somewhat arbitrary, responding not to how full the cabin is but to more general booking trends or scheduled patterns.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...869bc90d00.png

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8218572ff9.png

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b503a461c9.png

Hello again! This may, or may not, be my last update. I am currently 7 days out from my flight.

There are still 11 business seats open. The bid is still sitting at a $760 minimum. I am just kind of flummoxed at this point.

Considering the number of seats, if it comes down to 3 days, 2 days to go...how far do you think minimum bid would get me? My intention was always to overbid like most here would recommend.

Would SAS really turn down a minimum bid offer, if there aren't 10 other bids higher?

Based on recent experiences, yes. It seems like SAS system is geared towards both revenue generation and protection of perceived value. My working assumption (a hunch not a proven scientific speculation) is that one needs to bid 20% over minimum to be in with a chance, irrespective of how many seats are shown as free.

Not at all. I've one with (almost) minimum points bid multiple times.

You are not the only one to have won with minimum/almost minimum bids, so there is indeed a chance.

I have won with minimum money bids sometimes, but sometimes I won't even bid when the minimum bid looks expensive to me -- like over a $1000 on IAD-CPH at times.