- - United pricing changes hourly
(https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-airlines-mileageplus/1962174-united-pricing-changes-hourly.html)
DenverBrian
Mar 25, 2019 6:59 am
Originally Posted by JetAway
(Post 30926783)
You should always look a gift horse in the mouth as you can tell a lot about the animal's health that way. Someone may be trying to "gift" a sick horse.
Guess the cat's out of the bag on that phrase! :D :D :D
SteveHK
Mar 25, 2019 7:54 am
Originally Posted by findark
(Post 30924153)
Sure, but the bigger problem here is that while a human analyst who was dedicated to watching this flight in specific at all points in time might have been able to make a slightly better call and get your $100, UA has literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of flights on the schedule at any given time and it's not cost effective to monitor each one closely. Almost all of these inventory decisions are made by a computer, and the software is not even all that sophisticated (they rolled out a new management system recently and were proud of it on their quarterly call). Getting "perfect" inventory on a given route takes an investment, so there is a cost/benefit tradeoff.
Very true stuff here. I worked in RM for a couple of years in the very recent past, and it's probably about 90% automated on the domestic side and maybe about 75% automated on international (maybe even higher with Gemini nowadays). VERY FEW individual flights are actively managed by a human and those tend to be flights that we knew to have wildly different booking curves compared to recent data (Super Bowl, major conventions, shifting Easter holidays, KY Derby, etc).
mmontano73
Mar 25, 2019 10:14 am
My two bits. The mass media still portray it as "Airlines changing pricing on an hourly basis" (and often on Tuesday) and of course "jacking pricing up at the last minute to get the business traveller"...
When of course the actual fares rarely change and it is just the number of seats available in each bucket changing by being sold or closed out -- mixed with booking engines that look for the lowest fare with available seats.
