Change in Ticket price day before departure

[sharpei]

Hi all,

I have been looking at Virgin Blue Home for the last two weeks for a flight Sydney to Coffs Harbour, each around the $160+ mark.

I checked this afternoon around 4pm and found a fare for $89,

Is this normal practice to drop a fare so much?
Would it indicate a large cancellation like a group or similar?

Thanks so much for your thoughs in advance.

 

[Travel Guru]

Hi all,

I have been looking at Virgin Blue Home for the last two weeks for a flight Sydney to Coffs Harbour, each around the $160+ mark.

I checked this afternoon around 4pm and found a fare for $89,

Is this normal practice to drop a fare so much?
Would it indicate a large cancellation like a group or similar?

Thanks so much for your thoughs in advance.

It would generally indicate the airline has a large amount of distressed stock, or seats it doesn't feel based on the sales patterns for that flight that it will sell so it will endeavour to sell them at a distressed level just to sell them.

It does happen, but it doesn't happen all the time.

TG

 

[oz_mark]

It would generally indicate the airline has a large amount of distressed stock, or seats it doesn't feel based on the sales patterns for that flight that it will sell so it will endeavour to sell them at a distressed level just to sell them.

It does happen, but it doesn't happen all the time.

TG

I am guessing that the QF sale for some flights tomorrow indicates that sales on those flights were not particulalry strong.

 

[Standby]

Hi all,

I have been looking at Virgin Blue Home for the last two weeks for a flight Sydney to Coffs Harbour, each around the $160+ mark.

I checked this afternoon around 4pm and found a fare for $89,

Is this normal practice to drop a fare so much?
Would it indicate a large cancellation like a group or similar?

Thanks so much for your thoughs in advance.

To drop the price the day before departure really comes down to 2 options
1/The person responsible for the flight in DJs yield area basically got it wrong.
2/Perhaps a aircraft chge to larger type. If they allocate ,especially cheap fares, as a % of the capacity of the aircraft and that Capacity increases
more seats can become available.
However its a risk that so close to departure when customers are the most time sensitive ie they have to go, you risk diluting away revenue you would have got anyway without increasing the load to offset the yield hit.
The other bad thing it does is sends a message not to book early and to annoy those that have and now feel ripped off.
As a side issue I have noticed DJs happy hours recently have had a lot of offers very close to departure..again not the way to maximise your revenue & or things are getting tougher for them.
I should disclose I did work in Yield Management for a large hotel group in a past life so these comments are based on that experience

 

[Travel Guru]

To drop the price the day before departure really comes down to 2 options
1/The person responsible for the flight in DJs yield area basically got it wrong.
2/Perhaps a aircraft chge to larger type. If they allocate ,especially cheap fares, as a % of the capacity of the aircraft and that Capacity increases
more seats can become available.
However its a risk that so close to departure when customers are the most time sensitive ie they have to go, you risk diluting away revenue you would have got anyway without increasing the load to offset the yield hit.
The other bad thing it does is sends a message not to book early and to annoy those that have and now feel ripped off.
As a side issue I have noticed DJs happy hours recently have had a lot of offers very close to departure..again not the way to maximise your revenue & or things are getting tougher for them.
I should disclose I did work in Yield Management for a large hotel group in a past life so these comments are based on that experience

With all due respect for your hotel experience, i'd have to disagree with you regarding your comments about the 2 options you see as the reason they would drop the price close to departure.

Surely you as an experienced hotel employee would be familiar with distressed stock when it comes to hotel room and discounting that can go on within 7 and 14 days, and the same principle applies with airlines, irrespective of whether it dilutes value for those who paid a higher price.

Although its viable that there was an airlines change, DJ has too small a range in fleet for it to impact, and i've seen it far too many times on DJ and QF for it to be either of those two options you listed.

It simply comes down to sales, and if the plane is half empty, it doesn't take a member of staff stuffing up to realise that 89 dollars for a seat is better than no dollars.

Sure there are a plethora of reasons why airlines would reduce the ticket price so close to departure, but 9 times out of 10 i'd put my money on poor ticket sales rather than aircraft changes.

I should point out my comments are based on years of experience in the travel industy :mrgreen::mrgreen:

TG

 

[Standby]

With all due respect for your hotel experience, i'd have to disagree with you regarding your comments about the 2 options you see as the reason they would drop the price close to departure.

Surely you as an experienced hotel employee would be familiar with distressed stock when it comes to hotel room and discounting that can go on within 7 and 14 days, and the same principle applies with airlines, irrespective of whether it dilutes value for those who paid a higher price.

Although its viable that there was an airlines change, DJ has too small a range in fleet for it to impact, and i've seen it far too many times on DJ and QF for it to be either of those two options you listed.

It simply comes down to sales, and if the plane is half empty, it doesn't take a member of staff stuffing up to realise that 89 dollars for a seat is better than no dollars.

Sure there are a plethora of reasons why airlines would reduce the ticket price so close to departure, but 9 times out of 10 i'd put my money on poor ticket sales rather than aircraft changes.

I should point out my comments are based on years of experience in the travel industy :mrgreen::mrgreen:

TG

Well I think we are going to differ on oppinions here
My point is that there is a finite demand close to departure..
Dropping yr price by $20 and only capturing a booking that was going to travel anyway is a bad decision.
Options to Coffs isnt like Wotif and Hotels in MEL there are very limited choices by air and DJ actually have an advantage Jets vs Turbo props at business friendly times (at least eaqual to QFlink)
Your experience in travel seaches the best price/product and saving yr client money to ensure they are happy with you to get repeat business is exactly what you should do.
All I'm saying is I'm looking at it from the perspective of the business yr dealing with.I have an obligation to make the most i can out of each transaction.
We did have properties (including a resonable 4 star one in CFS).
Booking patterns generally dried up about 3 days out irrespective of price. To knowingly drop aprice for a sale you probobly would get inside that 3 day window made no sense as per the DJ price reduction.
Of course the missing variable is the Qantaslink price at the time the DJ fare dropped but generally QF do price higher and pray on brand loyalty/ Corp deals/FF to win the marginal business

 

[swissbignose]

It simply comes down to sales, and if the plane is half empty, it doesn't take a member of staff stuffing up to realise that 89 dollars for a seat is better than no dollars.

Someone should remind Qantas of this when they are focussing on Business Class awards or upgrades...

 

[dajop]

The theory about discounting because empty seats sounds plausible, and probably most likely. However on a few rare occasions I've seen some odd low fares come up in DJ engine (relative to other fares on the day), with only one or two seats available at the low fare level - I sometimes wonder if someone moves a flight it initially goes back into inventory at the original fare level not the fare level for other seats on the plane at the time the change is made.