BA to Dublin in December – big spike in fares

Just looking at booking a weekend trip to Dublin in December and according to the BA low price finder, fares are 50% higher than the rest of the year.

Does anyone know this might be? Should I hold off booking in the hope they might come back down again?

Aboslutely nothing available using Avios either, which is strange so far in advance.

AMcWhirter – I understand what you are saying, but on that basis one would expect there to be a gradual increase over the year.

In this case, price is consistant throughout the year up until the end of November, when there is a significant spike.

If you have a limited amount of a commodity, you will sell it for the highest price it can command. Revenue management’s job is to constantly monitor booking patterns based on past trends and actual bookings, and to put the available seats into the most appropriate revenue buckets to maximise yields.

Whether selling seats can be classed as a commodity in the same way as a diamond, is debatable, but as a professional, selling the commodity of “time” to fee paying clients, the regulators would come down like a ton of bricks, if hourly rates were spiked, according to demand.

I have seen fares increase by a factor of 3.5 from this week to last week. Revenue Management may be allowed to do this, but whether it is “fare” or not, is very very questionable…

To answer BA744fan’s original question, you often see such “spikes” 12 months in advance as the lower fare buckets will not have been loaded yet.

You often see the same when a new route is launched with only the fully flex, highest fare bucket available for forward purchase, with more refined pricing becoming visible later on.

Lowest fares are currently £89 rtn to Dublin and £106 rtn to Belfast City. I’m heading up there later in the year to see the Titanic Exhibition:

http://www.titanicbelfast.com/

It’s great news that Dublin and Belfast are heading to T5, though what, I wonder will have to go back to T1 in their stead…?

SM – nothing. I’d expect a big reshuffle of the pack in October: by then a number of airlines will have moved from T3 to T2. This will allow BA to move various flights to T3, and bring others from T1 to T3/T5.

Very good news about the Dub services moving to T5.