[Anonymous]

[MartynSinclair]

Can someone explain in relatively simple words, how a Premium Economy ticket costs more than a Club World ticket for the same flight…. am interested to learn something new….

Looking at seat selection on the 777 to BKK (BA 9), do BA block out window seats or are all the seats really taken….

BA 9 – 747 style, never saw so many seats blocked so far in advance…… early December departure…

[Bath_VIP]

Supply & demand basically. I saw this over the summer when flights to Toronto were cheaper in business than in economy (let alone premium economy) on both BA & AC. OK in that case it was the economy fare that was sky high. But earlier this year, I got a cheap first class ticket on Virgin trains that was cheaper than standard class. Whether these examples are flaws in the booking system instead, I don’t know.

[IanFromHKG]

You get these anomalies all the time. The Offspring did rather well on their school runs for a while when CX PE was cheaper than economy and the memsahib managed to get several flights booked at the lower rate. Unfortunately for my bank balance, they got used to it, the prices have returned to normality, but the memsahib continues to book PE!

[rferguson]

I would say the fare difference is just down to sold out fare classes. Each cabin has so many seats at a set fare. As each bracket sells out the next becomes the cheapest. So there may be a cheaper fare class still available in J whereas W may almost be sold out so charging the highest fare class. The J fare may also carry more restrictions than the W one.

If you provide your date of travel I will check if the seats are blocked or occupied.

[RichardB]

fare conditions: changeable tickets are more expensive than non-refundable ones. So refundable/changeable premium economy can be more expensive than non refundable business class.

And some people (eg on corporate travel polices) are fixed in the cabin they can buy tickets for. airlines can then make more money from the expensive economy tickets knowing those people who MUST travel on that particular flight will not buy the business class ticket.

[MartynSinclair]

Hi RF, many thanks for your offer – planned 5 or 6 of Dec.

(I wonder if any one will buy a more expensive PE seat over a cheaper CW??)

[IanFromHKG]

Martyn, as RichardB points out, that could well happen. Perhaps they need flexibility to cancel or change dates, or perhaps their travel policy doesn’t permit J even if it is cheaper (which is insane, but common)

[Tim2soza]

It also happens with (inflexible) F being cheaper than (flexible, and sometimes inflexible) CW in some caes.

[JordanD]

Martyn – regularly happens when travellers are bound by their company travel policy. I know many times in my previous employer where CE was cheaper than ET, but as CE was ‘not appropriate’ for someone at that grade, ET had to be taken, despite being more expensive.

In terms of why – as others have said (and using the example above), the cheaper CE ticket would be inflexible, non-refundable, whereas the more expensive ET ticket would be fully refundable …

[SergeantMajor]

You will often see comparatively good value Club World for flights during vacation periods (Christmas being a case in point) as leisure travellers plump for Premium Economy, selling out the cheaper fare buckets in that class, while sale Club fare are available as few people are travelling on flexible business fares at that time of year.

You can look for cheaper fares on the Low Fare Finder:

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/low-price-finder/public/en_gb

[craigwatson]

Not only that, but on a lot of internet booking engines it will only show what class you have specified. So if you ask for a price for Prem Econ. it will only show that and wont show a cheaper CW fare. They will have no problem selling the Y+ even at the higher fare

[IanFromHKG]

I agree, craigwatson, and it’s infuriating. Why can’t we do multi-class searches? Such a pain

[MartynSinclair]

Ian, this came to light by using ba.com as it does show multi class …

I tend to research first using Kayak, then go to ba.com and finally I am going to use a TC for this booking to see and understand the benefits.

[MartynSinclair]

An additional question on ticket pricing……

Are airlines allowed to move goalposts re ticket pricing. If the case is a certain allocation of tickets has been sold causing a lower class cabin to cost more than a higher class cabin, why does the airline not just play with the fare…

Airlines manage to manipulate availability with reward bookings so why not do the same with ticket prices that fall out of line??

[Author]

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