At the danger of descending into semantics here, I think "your RM has basically failed" means your whole RM pipeline which means the software, the RM department, and the management directives regarding RM strategy and implementation.

To me, this flight in question reads like a pendulum swinging too far back situation. Their model was too liberal with saver awards on new routes because it lacked historical booking data, so they tweaked it to err on the other side and be too conservative until enough data comes through. Probably in a few months they'll tweak it back in the other direction till they find a well-calibrated approach to new routes.

Indeed.
As far as total load goes: the flight left virtually full, with only 6 Y+ seats open. Overall, I guess a good day for demand on this new route.

Maybe their pricing strategy on the flight involves hoping to sell expensive Y tickets, so they wanted to keep the business cabin open for op-ups. Even if it didn't materialize on this flight...

My guess is the Revenue Mgmt software for new routes needs some sort of history and trends before adjusting award space....

The tightness with close-in award space is not limited to new flights. UA has just become extremely stingy releasing I space on its own metal.

There are data points where old routes with far less space showing saver space. In no case has that been shown in newer routes like ZRH or AMS.

Can you show us some newer routes that support your statement that have any saver space at all?

Please read my post more carefully.

On the quick route to "ignore."

Award space is just really tight doesn't explain it and as I mentioned space has come up on older routes like SFO-MUC with just a very small # of J inventoru - not half the aircraft J section. We've speculated that new routes don't release award space until more data is collected. That seems a sensible assumption given what we've seen.

Find us even one example of any new route with any business award saver space and that disproves the theory but I've been watching 3 of these routes for a month and there hasn't been 1 on 90% empty J sections.

Otherwise, just asserting your opinion contrary to provided data as others have and refusing to cite even one example and even threatening people is a bit silly and certainly not helpful so feel free to ignore.

That was definitely the case when IAH-SYD started last year. The J cabin was wide open most days, and J Saver was easy to come by, like 4-5 days a week. Even so, there still plenty of empty seats, that would mostly get filled with non-revs - sometimes a couple dozen on a single flight. I watched this route frequently over several months last year. What's happening now with Saver award space, on new routes and old, is very different than what was in place even a few months ago. Things have changed.

Flown this route a few times, business flies half full and lot of UA employees up front. It seems to me that the extra business seats would be more valuable on the IAH-AMS route.

777-200 (pmCO) has 50 BF seats. 787-900 has 48 BF seats.
Flying the AMS-SFO route in a week or so, might burn a GPU, let's see what happens, with 20-30 seats open PZ (and PN for GS folks) remains at 0...

well this morning TONS of seats on the various direct flights out of SFO to europe opened up. New and Old. One person made a comment that the system they use is somewhat manual opening up IN space for Saver Award. Perhaps there is some truth to that.

last week SFO-ICN. Both flights equally empty 24 hours before departure. 1/2 the seats taken and one was PN0PZ0IN0I0 the other one was PN9PZ9IN9I9 ... it seems to be quite random. The one with zeros left with many seats open in business after 10+ NRSA cleared.

Does a person at united look at each flight manually or something? One would thing this is all just an aglo that's contantly adjusted for revenue.

Agreed it looks like I space opened on Monday and Wednesday of the upcoming week on SFO-AMS which are all J9