I saw this being discussed before and was intrigued. I thought I'd pass on this discussion to those most knowledgeable on this . Mods, please feel free to move this - I couldn't really find anywhere else that was more appropriate for this.

So in this paper, "DYNAMIC AIRLINE PRICING AND SEAT AVAILABILITY", which can be found here, Expertflyer fare bucket data and airline seat maps are used to gauge availability and determine daily bookings.

Obviously, using seat maps can be hugely problematic for this, which is acknowledged in section 2.2 by the author. He concludes, however, that "the measurement error associated with seat maps is likely to be small" upon "perform[ing] two analyses". Do you think this is correct?

Additionally, isn't there also a potential issue with fare bucket data in that airlines often restrict and release fare buckets over time, and there being overlap between different fare buckets?

And could these issues with the data significantly impact the statistical inferences which the author draws?

I should have stopped when I got the start of the second paragraph heading:

"easyJet (2003) on dynamic adjustment to stochastic demand"

but I persisted to section 3:




At which point I would have run for the hills, except I'm already 700 feet up one of them.

But yes, the writer is clearly using the USA model where seating normally comes upon purchase, and most of the airlines walk you through the seating module as part of the payment process. BA only gives free seating to discrete groups of their passengers and so that whole section, and the basis drawn from it, won't work for BA. In economy, in Europe, BA isn't alone either, and not Basic fares have started to creep into the US system too, since the paper was written. However I'm generally able to estimate how full a flight is by looking at the bare bones seat plan and the fare buckets, but it's more magic than the formula above.

I'll keep looking out for more mistakes. If this is my final FT post, you will all know why.

Thank you corporate-wage-slave - I was personally under the impression that after the emergence of Frontier and Spirit etc, US flagship carriers became similar to BA and other Euro airlines with basic tickets and ancillary-revenue mining through seat selections etc., in order to remain competitive - interesting to hear that's not the case: thanks for the insight.

And yes, I doubt this formula could match your ability to predict! Please don't spend too long looking, not sure how this forum would be if this was your last post!

Thanks again for the help - its good to hear the data, whilst not perfect, is good. Would be interesting to see how it would turn out if European airline markets were analysed instead.

It's not really - apologies to you and those who have no interest in this. I couldn't really find anywhere on Flyertalk that seemed more appropriate for it and given the BA forum is the main one I follow, I decided to post it here.

Thought its just generally quite an interesting topic anyway - sorry if it's not to you!

This thread has been moved from BA forum due to lack of BA-specific content.

LTN Phobia
Moderator: BA forum

The correlation would be airline-specific at best given the variety of booking patterns, charges, mix of passenger type and access to advance seat assignments. Beyond that, even within an airline, the trends will vary significantly by route. On a recent international DL trip the domestic connection was nearly full at OLCI and the plane was full at departure. On the international segment only ~50% of seats were assigned when OLCI opened and the flight went out near 80% full, maybe more. My hopes of an empty row were dashed though I was fortunate to have one of the few empty seats remaining in my row.

Not to mention airlines tweak availability based on connecting bookings, not just direct sales on a single flight. The Inventory and Revenue management systems are incredibly complex. Reducing them to seat maps and published inventory is not going to lead to great results.