Another trundle out to South America beckons, In mid-April, work-related this time, and so I'm checking out BA's non-stop to Argentina, a route well-travelled now. Final destination is Mendoza, so from the UK it's perfect.
Outward flight: £386. Inbound, several days later: £2200. In World Traveller.
Huh? Check out Club World and it's only a couple of hundred quid pricier, but this is Work and things like Budgets loom...
So I click the 'one day before' button, and get quotes of £386 each way, but the inbound flight quotes £386 for World Traveller Plus and £418 for World Traveller. I've never completed a flight booking so fast.
Checking prices from home, that evening, showed that the anomaly had been corrected, but can anyone shed light on this? Would it just have been a matter of someone keying in the wrong prices? And why such a humungous fare for the inbound WT class flight?
Next stage is to see if my luck persists and I can persuade someone in BA to let me upgrade using some of the 300,000 Avios I'm currently sitting on, but I don't hold out much hope for that.....
RichardB - 08/02/2012 13:46 GMT
This doesn't seem that strange. There are different fare classes and if cheap tickets are sold out on one day, then you are offered a more expensive fare.
And there is even some overlap of fares between C,W and Y. The cheapest C fare might be more expensive than a full WT+ fare and even full fare economy might be more expensive than cheaper WT+ and C fares.
When buying my own tickets the discount WT+ fares (when on sale) are the best since they earn good tier points, are upgradeable with avios and if you get an op-up then you will be in business class.
Thanks for that. I was just baffled by the economy return leg being quoted at over two grand....
LeTigre - 08/02/2012 14:13 GMT
In the recent CW sale just a few weeks ago, CW was much cheaper than world traveller on some routes at peak times, including Australia. For £1012, a ticket in any class to Australia is relatively good value.
VintageKrug - 08/02/2012 15:06 GMT
You might find the fare drops considerably if you're able to make a Saturday night stay; often worth doing as the saving can easily fund a weekend in a decent hotel, with plenty of change left over.
Check back at T-14 and T-7 as well as daily prior to flying as I've noticed that availability often opens up last minute these days.
Cheap C, what *A generally sells as Z, not sure if there is a OW parallel is IMO experience cheaper than full Y which is Y. You can sometimes find A which is cheaper than C or J but that's rare.
@VK- yes, very true, but unfortunately I'm on a tight schedule this time.
What's irritating me slightly is an upcoming trip to Singapore in late May. Reckon I can make Gold on that one, but may be forced to fly Singapore Airlines economy (company thing). Very good, but I'd rather fly BA CW.
ScottWilson - 08/02/2012 17:27 GMT
This happens from time to time on various airlines. Routes that get very high leisure demand, but limited premium demand at certain times can mean that not far out from departure time it can be as cheap if not cheaper to go in a undersold premium class.
It helps if the cabins are fixed in size, not flexible, although I have found premium cabins cheaper or as expensive as economy on the odd US domestic route, Auckland-Sydney, London-Pisa and London-Cairo from my experience on certain days in the past few years.
RoadKing - 09/02/2012 11:51 GMT
@LPPSKrisflyer:
I have been there. I once paid for a full fare economy being the only economy available, and biz was cheaper (Lufty). But company policy (the company I worked for back then) said no to the cheaper ticket because it was the wrong class.
Silly, silly and silly.
capetonianm - 09/02/2012 20:35 GMT
The simple explanation is that each class of service (i.e cabin) will correspond to several sub-classes or yield management groups, for example on BA, Premium Economy (WT+) will have the code W for full unrestricted fares, then there are 2 or maybe 3 lower groups E, T and probably another which I don't remember). It could therefore happen that all that is available in Economy is a full unrestricted Y class fare, which is more expensive than a restricted E or T in WT+.
In the same way, but with a greater complexity, the econmoy (M class) cabin is divided into about 15 sub classes, M, N, O, Q, G,H, K, L, etc.
Remember that passengers are not meant to understand airline pricing, and when they do, then the airlines pricing department have got it wrong!
