jfkeze

In the case of some deals... Interns

ft543

Hopefully CX keeps their fare and RM interns

But for most of the international fares, they are intentional sales. Here's how it's been explained to me before.

• Delta's often have some long advance purchase requirements. Same with the other ex-USA ones
• OTA bundles under 2k probably aren't intentional?
• Ex-EU to the US is cheaper because of lopsided TATL demand/currency.
• EU to Asia/OZ and Asia to EU has lots of competition from Asian carriers and ME3.
• There are a handful of fares that seem too good to be a sale, but don't see enough volume so they stay alive.
• I don't actually know why OSL/ARN are common locations for Australia fares though.

Tokyoite

Greedy sales teams
(who didn’t think through the fare and missed adding fare restrictions )
Interns?!
(who get the currency conversion rates wrong when filing a fare)
Genuine sales that target specific markets but end up getting filed wrongly without the market restrictions (SITI/SOTO restrictions)
strategic sales to gain market share- QR and their fares out or ARN/OSL or ANA out of SYD or AA/DL to/from of China
sudden currency fluctuations that render the ticket absurdly cheaper than planned- Myanmar fares and Venezuela fares.
Exceptional work by FTers to find creative routings (long backtracking) for otherwise mundane fares.

lots of reasons for the discount fares.

VFR

Folks say this, but I actually bet they are intentional. Airlines have usually been willing to sell inventory to cruise operators specifically at a very deep discount; think $600 for one way J to Europe to a cruise company. At some point, if you're selling it to cruise lines, sell a few to OTAs to try to capture some price-sensitive customers in a channel that price-insensitive business travelers usually do not book? Especially in markets where demand is very seasonal (e.g. Europe in the winter) and you have trouble filling seats.

Of course, once the word is out and everyone knows it's a good deal, you pull the OTA fares because you want to avoid your price-inelastic customers knowing how they can get a cheaper fare. I'd actually go so far to say that some OTA bundles (e.g. the cheap AA fares to Europe via AAVacations) are one of the most useful "open secrets" of this game... don't spoil it too much bloggers!

_fx

Absolutely this. The cogs of a J seat is way, WAY lower than it’s sticker price. Sneaky bundle sales are a great way to dump excess inventory without devaluing the product.

sp333

The worst are companion offers - they know and we know how little the product is actually worth. For sale fares, much like Black Friday sales on the high street they’re on to us and and the deals really aren’t that good. If you’re a little flexible you should be able to get to most places from the EU for less than £1000 plus a short re-positioning flight, most times of the year.

The best sales are of course when the airline doesn’t know there’s a sale on...😉

VFR

I think there are some good opportunities for sales in cases where the airline knows that, on a statistical level, they aren't going to fill all of the seats and they have to fly the planes, at which point they are interested in getting any money for a seat, above the marginal cost to operate. The trick is to do it in a way that does not devalue the market or upset (too much) passengers that paid more.