[Tim2soza]

Rough rule of thumb is > 4 weeks and

[Tim2soza]

Rough rule of thumb is > 4 weeks and less than 10. It seems anything less than 4 weeks is into serious yield management as airlines have a feel for customer demand. Anything beyond 10 weeks tends to at rack (expensive) rate unless some promotion is on.

Saturday night away rule will at least half prices, and avoid Thurs / Fri back to UK for best prices.

Finally, getting upgrades for miles can be done right up to the wire. I have purchased extra miles on my laptop resting on VAA upper class check-in desk to get a PE to UC upgrade, 90 mins before take off.

[Tim2soza]

Just testing whether this forum likes the < sign.

[Tim2soza]

Yep, don’t know if anyone has noticed, but you can’t type a minus sign on this site. Sorry if this is old news.

[BusinessTraveller]

Hi Tim2sms,

Thanks for pointing this out. The reason this is happening is because the site thinks that when you type that character, you are about to include some html in your post, and so it ignores the character and doesn’t print it.

There is a way round this – if you use the html encoder for that character, then it will appear correctly. If you take a look at your previous post you’ll see what i mean – we’ve added the html code, and if you go to edit your post, you’ll see the relevant code behind it.

[Cwyfan]

You guys are so knowledgeable about all this, perhaps you can give me another tip

When I am looking at availability, it will often say something like only one left at this price, say, for example, £800. If I then search for the price of two tickets, it will say, for example, £1,000 each. Is the latter an average price, so if I just bought the single ticket at £800 first, the next available minimum price would be £1,200, to give the £1,000 average, or if I boughty the £800 ticket, would the next one then just be £1,000, saving me the £200?

I hope that is clear!

[continentalclub]

Ah, a toe in the water of the darkly arty pool of revenue management!

The short answer is that different policies apply depending on what kind of carrier you are booking with and, broadly speaking, only one set of booking conditions can apply to all the seats reserved within one booking reference or ‘PNR’.

More lengthily, that means that, on a carrier which uses a traditional Global Distribution System to manage sales, you might be subject to different conditions on the £800 ticket than you might be on a separately offered £1200 one. The two conditions can’t be reserved together, so the system might therefore be obliged to return a result suggesting that, for two people, only the £1200 fare is available.

It might also, therefore, leave the £800 ticket in available inventory, for a solo passenger to book subsequently.

At least that’s the theory, and it is very much the way that UK rail tickets are sold – so it’s often very worthwhile splitting larger groups and making separate bookings online in such circumstances.

The problem with split-party bookings on UK railways is that seat reservations are randomised, and the passengers can end up flung about the train.

There’s no such problem with seat allocations on GDS airlines, as they’re dealt with separately from the reservations process and, subject to other pre-allocations, it’s usually possible for a split-booked party to select seats together.

However in practice, the other point that sometimes applies is the relative sophistication of the airlines’ booking systems, particularly online. Specifically, three things can happen:

1. If there’s only one seat available at the lower price, and two are purchased at a higher price from a fare bucket with two or more seats available, then the single lower-priced ticket will remain available to purchase for a subsequent solo traveller, as described above.

2. If there’s only one seat available at the lower price, and two are purchased at a higher price from a fare bucket with two or more seats available, then the system can automatically remove the single seat availability from the system, and a subsequent search will show only the higher fare(s).

3. Again, if there’s only one lower-priced seat available, then the system can be programmed to effectively ‘average’ the fares between one at the lower fare and one at the next fare level up. Even though it has combined the inventory, it will issue both seats with the same booking conditions applying, and these conditions will usually be those more restrictive ones which would have applied to the cheaper seat.

Given the variety of options available to the airlines, and the potential for them to change revenue management systems at will, there’s no real way of knowing which one might be being applied in any given circumstance.

The split-booking method in theory means that you’re getting the best fare for each seat, but there are two downsides:

A. Your party is not considered (by the system) to be ‘together’ for the purposes of re-booking or re-routing in the event of irregular operations.

B. Multiple bookings, especially in a short space of time, can cause the system to dynamically respond by pushing up fares, or deleting cheaper inventory, as it detects what it believes to be a demand spike.

Ultimately then, as with so much in life, you pays your money and you takes your chances!

[Cwyfan]

Thank you continentalclub for an excellent and full response, giving much food for thought. I perhaps should have limited my query to BA, as that was what I was really getting at.

[continentalclub]

My pleasure, and all of the above could apply to BA – there really is no way of knowing how they’re managing revenue/inventory either generally or on any given day.

Indeed, in scenario (2) above, the customer has no way of definitively knowing whether the system has actually removed a cheaper single seat, or someone else has just booked it in the meantime!

As I said, it’s a dark art….

[continentalclub]

A quick bump as this promotion ends at midnight BST tonight.

It’s perhaps also worth mentioning that some BAEC members have reported increased Club World redemption availability showing recently, so a discounted World Traveller Plus fare with a Miles for Upgrade might represent particularly good value.

http://bit.ly/cYWKP1

[JordanD]

For the purposes of clarity what WT+ booking classes are eligble for MFU?

[continentalclub]

All of them if booked directly with BA, with the exception of those to which Shareholder Discount has been applied.

[Cwyfan]

Is there any way of checking out MFU availability before booking WT+ to avoid disappointment?

[JordanD]

CC – thanks: am playing around booking a last minute (in the sales) trip to IAD with various options, including a Exec Club Gold Upgrade for 2 voucher. Currently to IAD, WT+ is £615 return in T booking class, and WT is £436 is Q, S and V booking classes.

Seeing as the GUF2 is (correct me if I’m wrong) applicable regardless of booking class, and Q/S/V don’t allow MFU, I think WT+ is looking very good.

[continentalclub]

kmcottrell: simply go to the Book and Upgrade page on the Executive Club website:

http://bit.ly/9HWusK

(log in required) and select which sectors you wish to upgrade, your route, dates, passenger details and which cabin you wish to upgrade from.

You can then proceed with a ‘dummy’ booking to check availability, without any commitment or payment required.

JordanD: you’re quite right that a GUF2 can be used to upgrade from any revenue booking class, even the most deeply-discounted World Traveller ones.

[Author]

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