Should I book as soon as Delta's Window opens?

[BeeDeeJoe]

Keep tracking the price for awhile. I tracked fare from MSP to FLL for a Dec departure for one month after the dates were released. Then booked it because it was not coming down and I wanted a direct flight in the early morning because of the winter weather.

 

Currently,looking for a fare from MSP to Tampa for april/may. The fare is $150.00 more than I paid last November for any dates.Been tracking for over a month.

 

I think the lower fare for Fort Meyers is because Sun Country has direct flights during the high season in direct competition with Delta.

Good luck and have a great cruise.

 

I am looking to book airfare for 8 MSP to FLL Nov 6 return Nov 14. I have been tracking the nonstop airfare since it became available right before Christmas. The price finally dropped from $780 to $550 for the nonstops a couple of weeks ago. Today I check and the Saturday Nov 14 nonstop FLL to MSP is no longer listed.....same for the Saturday before and the Saturday after. Would this just be a computer glitch or did Delta really pull the Saturday nonstops?

[fbgd]

You know you're posting in a thread that's been dead for almost 3yrs, right?

[FlyerTalker]

You know you're posting in a thread that's been dead for almost 3yrs, right?

At least we know they used the search function...;)

[kenish]

I am looking to book airfare for 8 MSP to FLL Nov 6 return Nov 14. Would this just be a computer glitch or did Delta really pull the Saturday nonstops?

 

I checked independently of Delta's website. DL1103 doesn't operate on Saturdays effective their schedule change on 9/1/15. The general trend is that airlines are pulling aircraft out of leisure markets like FLL to put them on more lucrative routes. So the service reduction isn't surprising although Saturday afternoon is a peak travel day out of FLL with all the people off cruise ships.

 

BTW if you're buying for 8 people you should book a few at a time, not all 8 in a single transaction. You already may be aware of this, so I won't go through the explanation unless you need it.

[villauk]

 

BTW if you're buying for 8 people you should book a few at a time, not all 8 in a single transaction. You already may be aware of this, so I won't go through the explanation unless you need it.

 

I'd appreciate you explaining to me as we've found one of two things usually happen when we try to book for our travelling party of 7:

 

A) as soon as you enter 7 persons, the price of the ticket rises from the amount you'd be paying pp if you were booking for 2

 

B) you book for 4 persons first and then when you attempt to book the other 3 people, the price pp has risen for their tickets

 

So, either way we lose out. We did book direct with the airline via their call centre and UA were very cooperative, not charging the booking fee and charging the same lower price for all the tickets. However, I'd appreciate you giving any pointers for future reference.

 

Additionally, it's also been said on here about not booking as soon as the prices are released. I did quote on another thread about LH PE prices rising considerably after their initial release date (by day 10ish the price had risen 50% and they have not dropped since. I realise there is still plenty of time to change, however I assume as there are only a limited number of PE seats available, several have been sold so it's supply and demand). The prices rose to the extent that it would have taken us out of the price bracket for booking. Basically, I'm asking if this advice applies to holiday sailings flying in limited cabin seating classes, or is that a totally different ball game?

[Gardyloo]

I'd appreciate you explaining to me as we've found one of two things usually happen when we try to book for our travelling party of 7:

 

A) as soon as you enter 7 persons, the price of the ticket rises from the amount you'd be paying pp if you were booking for 2

 

B) you book for 4 persons first and then when you attempt to book the other 3 people, the price pp has risen for their tickets

 

So, either way we lose out. We did book direct with the airline via their call centre and UA were very cooperative, not charging the booking fee and charging the same lower price for all the tickets. However, I'd appreciate you giving any pointers for future reference.

 

Additionally, it's also been said on here about not booking as soon as the prices are released. I did quote on another thread about LH PE prices rising considerably after their initial release date (by day 10ish the price had risen 50% and they have not dropped since. I realise there is still plenty of time to change, however I assume as there are only a limited number of PE seats available, several have been sold so it's supply and demand). The prices rose to the extent that it would have taken us out of the price bracket for booking. Basically, I'm asking if this advice applies to holiday sailings flying in limited cabin seating classes, or is that a totally different ball game?

You are encountering one of the most frustrating, and for most people indecipherable, aspects of the aviation industry, "yield management," sometimes called "revenue management" or similar things.

 

Basically, once the plane door closes, the residual value of empty seats falls to zero. The airlines know that statistically they aren't going to sell every seat on every flight, so they've devised extremely sophisticated (and VERY closely guarded) computer programs which seek to earn the most money possible for every flight that pulls from the gate.

 

Because flights can be booked months in advance, and because the airlines' own costs - fuel, labor, maintenance, etc. - can also fluctuate over that "window" of time, as can demand for certain routes (also a function of competition) these yield management programs have been designed to monitor many factors, day to day, minute to minute.

 

Seats for sale are grouped into fare classes (or "buckets") that have subtle variations between them - advance booking requirements, refund or change fees, whatever - and which have different prices. On any given flight, there can be 10, 20 or even more "buckets" just within the economy cabin, and more for business or first class.

 

The computers, monitoring the sale rates, looking at historic data for the flight dates, at the number of seats available from competitors, and many other factors, will assign X number of seats to each bucket on any given day throughout the sale period (typically 11 months for US airlines.) When flights are first made available (around 330 days before the flight date, say) the computers may assign only a few seats - or maybe none at all - to the cheapest, most restrictive buckets. After all, the airlines may not know what the price of fuel will be 11 months out, so they don't want to sell seats at what might be a loss.

 

As the booking period goes on, more seats will be assigned to various buckets, while the computers monitor sales etc. But as the flight date approaches, generally the cheapest buckets will sell out, and prices will climb on the remaining seats as one bucket sells out and is not replenished by the computer with seats from "higher" buckets, until ultimately the last seats available might be "full-fare" tickets with breathtaking prices.

 

So back to your story. When you request, say, 7 tickets for a given flight for a given day, what happens if there are only 5 seats available in that day's cheapest bucket? Well, the computer simply bumps all 7 tickets to the next highest bucket where there ARE 7 seats available. Most people don't travel in groups of 7, so the unsold 5 seats in the lower bucket will eventually get sold. But if you'd asked to buy just 5 seats, you'd probably have gotten the remaining 5 seats, and the other 2 members of your party would get seats from the next highest bucket.

 

Sometimes real people at the airlines can request (from YM, where there are also real people, all graduates of Hogwarts) to release seats from higher buckets into lower ones, and thus will be able to give you all the seats at the cheaper price. In essence they can override the YM computers to do so. But this is rare; remember their aim (as with any business) is to maximize profits. They know they're selling a product that vanishes from inventory when the door closes, so they want to make as much money as they can from every seat on every plane on every day.

[FlyerTalker]

This is not about losing. You are thinking that ALL the tickets you want to buy should be the same low price. But it's about inventory. Here's the quick and dirty about booking more than one airline ticket and how pricing "changes".

 

Airlines use inventory "buckets" to allocate tickets at various price points. They tend to be subsets of the next higher bucket. So, let's say that airline XX has 20 seats left to sell on flight 123 (all numbers hypothetical just for example):

 

Their yield management computers say that they should have 2 seats in the lowest bucket (D), 2 in the next higher © ,4 in the next higher (B) and 12 in the full fare highest bucket (A).

 

Which means our inventory from high to low is: A20, B8, C4, D2.

 

This means that there are 2 tickets at the lowest price point. Buy 1 or 2 and you get those tickets. However, the computer system will NOT take tickets from separate buckets and average the cost. Instead it will look for the bucket that has the ENTIRE number of tickets and buy all of them at that price point.

 

If you try to buy 3 tickets, it will only find 2 in the D bucket, so it skips that and moves up the price ladder to find one that has 3 or more tickets. C has that, so you pay the C price for all the tickets, even though you could have gotten two at the D price. Same with four tickets...you get them all out of the C bucket at the C price.

 

Now, let's get even bigger numbers. You want five tickets. Whoops...not in D, not in C...you now have to buy from the B bucket. Even though four of those five could have been bought at lower pricing. You want nine..now ALL of the tickets come from A, even though eight were available if bought in smaller groups.

 

Unless you have access to a tool that shows bucket availability, you need to do a trial and error method. Check for one ticket and see the pricing. Now increase the quantity. Whenever the cost per ticket jumps, you've moved into a new fare bucket. Often you can also see that the fare code (some letter) has changed. Now you know....only the previous number were available in that cheapest bucket.

 

So...to average down the cost of the ticket, you need to buy the max for each level until you get your total number of tickets. This can be problematic if buying for non-related parties.

 

Hope this explains it a bit. Come back with any questions.

 

 

[villauk]

Thanks both for your very detailed explanations :). In future, I'll be checking the prices individually to see what tickets I can get out of each bucket then ;).

 

I suppose my only fear would be having all separate bookings for the same flight and then something happens and we cannot all travel together because we're all on different restrictions as we've purchased from different buckets (not a problem if it was just the other family that travels with us, but I wouldn't want our kids to be separated). Which I presume could happen because, for example, some of the cheaper tickets may not allow re routings on other airlines etc. :confused:?

 

I expect the majority of flyers, just like myself, book a ticket and don't really take into consideration all the restrictions that may be linked to that ticket - hence your points on CC about Choice Air. Presumably CA can issue you with tickets from different buckets for the same flight and most wouldn't know whether they had the same restrictions as their travelling companions or not until something went wrong (if I've understood your posts correctly), especially as CA could pre purchase tickets from different buckets to sell on to cruisers?

 

Thanks again :).

[Globaliser]

I'd appreciate you explaining to me as we've found one of two things usually happen when we try to book for our travelling party of 7:

 

A) as soon as you enter 7 persons, the price of the ticket rises from the amount you'd be paying pp if you were booking for 2

 

B) you book for 4 persons first and then when you attempt to book the other 3 people, the price pp has risen for their tickets

You are encountering one of the most frustrating, and for most people indecipherable, aspects of the aviation industry, "yield management," sometimes called "revenue management" or similar things.

To be fair, this has little to do with yield management or revenue management. It's simply a consequence of the fact that in most airlines' systems, for every flight in the booking every passenger must be booked in the same booking class. This is a system limitation, but one that has to remain in place because of the need to be able to interline.

[FlyerTalker]

In an effort to strike a comprehensive chord, it's both revenue management AND interlining limitations.

 

If the airline didn't have many fare buckets, there likely wouldn't be the need for the interlining limitation, since there would just be the one fare. Complications in the fare structures require system adjustments. A bit of chicken and egg...both contribute to the end situation - just that fare buckets are the most apparent variable to the consumer and the requirement for same fares is the defining factor to the airline.

 

I'll buy you each a drink at the next Cruise Air "do" to celebrate you both being right, IMO. :D

[waterbug123]

A) as soon as you enter 7 persons, the price of the ticket rises from the amount you'd be paying pp if you were booking for 2

 

B) you book for 4 persons first and then when you attempt to book the other 3 people, the price pp has risen for their tickets

 

So, either way we lose out. We did book direct with the airline via their call centre and UA were very cooperative, not charging the booking fee and charging the same lower price for all the tickets. However, I'd appreciate you giving any pointers for future reference.

 

Not exactly. You said the price rises when you enter 7 people, and the same happens if you divide it into a group of 4 followed by a group of 3. But in the 2nd scenario, even though the price rose for the group of 3, theoretically you still got 4 seats at the cheapest fare, and only paid a higher fare for 3, as opposed to a higher fare for all 7. Make sense? But as you found, sometimes if you call, the agent on the phone can finagle more seats at the lowest fare. In fact, sometimes after you book the 4, you go back to book the next 3 and find that the airline has immediately (since your purchase just seconds ago) released more seats into that lower fare bucket and you actually get all 7 at the same cheaper fare, albeit in 2 separate transactions.

 

 

I suppose my only fear would be having all separate bookings for the same flight and then something happens and we cannot all travel together because we're all on different restrictions as we've purchased from different buckets

 

You mentioned the common references to different restrictions if purchasing via Choice Air, and you are assuming that you will encounter the same variety of restrictions when purchasing from different fare buckets from the airline. While that COULD be the case, it is much less likely that you would have restrictions that were materially different. The issue with Choice Air is that sometimes when you are getting a ticket at a super deal, it is a "specially negotiated" fare. These are the ones with the heavy restrictions. On the airline website you are generally only getting published fares. While they may not be exactly the same, you are unlikely to find yourself in a situation where in the event of flight disruptions, 3 of your party are told "no problem, we can re-route you through New York" while the other 4 are told, "sorry you must flight this exact same route and there are no seats on it for 2 more days."

 

That said, could you end up flying separately? Of course, because in a last minute rebooking scenario, finding any particular set of flights with 8 seats remaining, especially after pax with priority have already been rebooked, can be challenging. But that should not be the end of the world; as long as the airline can get you all where you're going, be it through a later flight, rerouting or interlining, you'll be set. Just make sure if you have to book your party into separate groups you divide any minors amongst the groups so that you have responsible adults with each minor in case you do need to separate at some point, and meet up again at your final destination.

[Globaliser]

If the airline didn't have many fare buckets, there likely wouldn't be the need for the interlining limitation, since there would just be the one fare. Complications in the fare structures require system adjustments. A bit of chicken and egg...both contribute to the end situation - just that fare buckets are the most apparent variable to the consumer and the requirement for same fares is the defining factor to the airline.

Fair enough, but I think that this system limitation has been there since before yield management really became an identified discipline. AIUI, it's one of those legacy things that lives on because however slick the modern IT is, the underlying processes duplicate things that date back to paper tickets. So those of us who routinely used paper tickets will intuitively understand the processes that have to take place even in modern reservation systems.

 

In contrast, I recently fly EZY for the first time and on a single reservation got tickets at two different prices for the two of us.

[villauk]

Thanks, waterbug123, I've definitely learnt a few things about buckets over the last couple of days :D. Joking aside, it's reassuring to know that as we tend to book directly with the airlines, their tickets are usually not the most restrictive. I'll also take onboard the point about ensuring the kids are spilt with an adult on each reservation ;).

[skf]

I'll also take onboard the point about ensuring the kids are spilt with an adult on each reservation .

An excellent suggestion.

If one does call an airline, do remember to be nice to the agent...no-one will get anywhere by shouting that life is unfair.

Steve

[waterbug123]

If one does call an airline, do remember to be nice to the agent...no-one will get anywhere by shouting that life is unfair.

Steve

 

Another excellent tip. A couple of times in recent years I've had flights get canceled amidst a storm that crippled ATL and left thousands stranded. I know in those situations there are tons of people calling and just bashing the agents nonstop with "well that's not good enough, you need to fix this NOW" type attitudes. So when I call I start off by asking saying I'm sure they've been getting screamed at all day but that I understand that the situation is what it is, and just want a simple refund or whatever. Sometimes you can almost hear the sign of relief, LOL.

Sometimes cancellation/refund is the only viable option, but after a pleasant intro, I've literally had agents keep me on the phone with "hang on, let me just check one more possibility" type comments.

[FlyerTalker]

Sometimes cancellation/refund is the only viable option, but after a pleasant intro, I've literally had agents keep me on the phone with "hang on, let me just check one more possibility" type comments.

Sometimes, I've got an agent working on an involved process. They'll ask if they can put me on hold and I respond with "take all the time you need, no rush" or something like "whatever time you need, just go ahead, I'm OK".

 

Of course, I then put the hold on speakerphone so I can multi-task during the wait.....:D