How Are Fares Loaded/Allocated to the Bucket for TA flights?

[jerseyfinn]

My wife and I are trying to plan next years 2008 travel to Europe and I have a few questions about how seats are allocated/released to the bucket.

We're finding that for PHL-MAD in July 2008, the web site is only offering MHM/MHE fares as their "lowest priced" fares. The bucket at present is only showing Y/B/M fare availibility and the rest of coach =0. At what point in time does US start to load the "real" discount fares?

Interestingly, my wife and I are willing to consider a Z fare for this flight, but the web site only offers a Z outbound and a D return. That return is out of our price range. Z bucket has 7 outbound and 0 return.

The odd part for me is looking at the entire Sabre fare price list for PHL-MAD and MAD-PHL. I can find two different Z fares listed on the PHL-MAD route (ZKX30BC and ZLX30BC basis fares) but no Z fares are listed on the MAD-PHL leg ( only C and DXORY ). The seat maps show Envoy wide open both ways.

It looks to me as if US does not intend to offer Z fare on the MAD-PHL leg in 2008 or has not loaded Z yet for the return. I also notice the same situation with BCN-PHL which also shows up when I do my search.

Can anyone offer some insight into how this process works?

As I say, we're leaning Z outbound ( and ideally return), but lacking a Z fare, we want the cheapest seat for the return as we fly this route every year and we know that our UG prospects as Golds next year will be nil. No sense even trying to buy an M fare for the return if we know we're gonna sit in the back.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Barry

 

[SpinDoc]

My wife and I are trying to plan next years 2008 travel to Europe and I have a few questions about how seats are allocated/released to the bucket.

Fare allocation information is proprietary and confidential, but I can give you an idea of how it works.
There used to be a secret room in Crystal City with a large computer. An input device similar to a numeric keypad was attached to the computer and placed on the floor. Every 60 minutes, they would release a chicken into the room, and the chicken would peck on the keys for a few minutes, and the corresponding numbers would then be used as the base fare numbers for all of the city pairs in the system. While I cannot confirm that this method of fare calculation has been transferred to Tempe, I did hear that witchcraft and midgets are somehow involved in the current fare determinations.

 

[jerseyfinn]

. . . Every 60 minutes, they would release a chicken into the room, and the chicken would peck on the keys for a few minutes, and the corresponding numbers would then be used as the base fare numbers for all of the city pairs in the system . . .

Isn't that how Parker started before he moved up and the midget replaced him?

Barry

 

[PHL]

From what a friend of mine at another large legacy carrier told me (who works in back office) -

When you look that far ahead and only see a few fares loaded, it's usually because the demand planning aspect of determining future fares hasn't been utilized. They likely will offer lower discount coach fares, and even will probably open up the Z fares, but since most people who are paying for summer travel (rather than using points) don't start making real firm plans until the Winter, revenue management doesn't allocate the rest of the buckets until later in the year, and even more tweaking in the early part of the year.

 

[SegmentKing]

something that East used to do is only sell 50% of the capacity, so the buckets were based on 100 seats instead of 200. this way you can sell some moderately priced fares without selling too many of the cheaper fares first.

 

[jerseyfinn]

something that East used to do is only sell 50% of the capacity, so the buckets were based on 100 seats instead of 200. this way you can sell some moderately priced fares without selling too many of the cheaper fares first.

Thanks for the insights. It makes sense to hold back pieces of the bucket. I'll just have to keep watching so that we can accomplish what we want. I guess that there's no price differential if we break our itinerary into OW segments, purchasing that outbound Z now and waiting for Z to materialize for the return ( or wait for the cheapest seat since we know how tough UGs are to snag on that return).

Last year, we purchased RT late December 2006 for our July 2007 MAD flight ( also Zs ). I've grown so tired of Tempe's smoke and mirrors that we're simply trying to get our travel in order ASAP as I'm dropping from Plat to Gold next year and we already know that UGs will be a thing of the past. We make 3 trips to Spain a year and we like to make that summer trip a bit more special. Otherwise, we're trying to target the lowest prices to accomodate our TA needs since US has changed the game -- leaves open the GoEnvoy option if we so choose.

Thanks again.

Barry