I was told by a HBA agent that the yield management team may program the bot to limit the total number of releasable seats on specific flights/routes. For example a QF A380 has 70 business seats, there could be a hard cap of 4 x U seats released, but after this EF would probably still show I9 until revenue seats start to fill up.
This matches my experience, I've almost always been successful requesting seats at T-353 on very high demand routes. (QF2 LHR-SYD, QF25/26 SYD-HND vv during cherry blossom season, etc)
If there was any criteria specific to the QFF member I would expect it to be the number of requests in a certain period. But then again, I was successful in requesting QF2 LHR-SYD seats after consecutive months of having other seats released.. so I don't think this is a huge factor. I expect my QF PCV to be relatively low.
This is standard YM practice across most (if not all) airlines, hotels, etc. How much inventory you have, what you are prepared to sell at certain price points(including "award" - which has a price).. and this can all be very specific not only to specific routes and aircraft but days of the week in months depending on demand profiles and historic data. An obvious example is we all know people want to go places BEFORE Christmas (but not ON Christmas day) or during school holidays etc. The models all factor this in of course - such that availability of cheaper inventory(including reward) will be far less, if any, because they(QF, hotel, whatever) know most likely demand > supply so they can extract a yield premium.
Plus even if flights show say I9 some things to remember there - that the 9 represents a max number of seats the airline will sell in that bucket in one transaction. That's all. Some other airlines use a lower number as the max. AA seems to use 7 for example, NZ I have noticed is 4, at least in the J inventory. The other thing to remember is that many flights, of course, are not independent entities. What I mean by that is that more often than not a flight will be part of a connection and looking at a flight, say SYD-LAX, in isolation doesn't tell the whole story. Showing availability is only part of the overall story of any specific flight.
I've known a few folks who have worked in YM for various airlines over the years and seems to me from what I've been told that as much of it is "art" as it is science.. as in there are so many variables you simply can't factor in in any realistic way (for example, the planners in 2019 had no way of knowing a pandemic would hit the next year...)... and schedules and forward planning is done well in advance (or historically was, probably is far more month by month now, which is why we now see things like route cancels, equipment changes and so on within just a month or two of travel and so much disruption).
While the "bot" may then look at some factors of the specific requestor (the "PCV" for example) and use a specific set of criteria to either approve or not.
My experience of the manual review recently seemed to be as much a case of customer service as much as probably reviewing my profile, recent requests (very few over the years), whatever my PCV (probably quite low) to QF is and whatever. From the interactions I had with the VIP Team it was 50/50 if they would do the override for me. Luckily for me they said yes (I should hold on that until I've actually flown it!!
) and I fully understood this given how the flight looked I was very much prepared for a "no." but really appreciated that "they" discussed it (I was told the agent would dicuss it 'with the team' if it was OK. There was no reference specifically to YM or any other department, but that just could have been the wording used to simplify it for the customer).
I'm well aware that holding (thanks to status extensions) the high status allows me this level of discretion and I'm very thankful for it, but then again potentially a factor was the 2,000+ SC's I'd earned this year so they knew they had a fair bit of revenue from me as was. Possibly if I only had one or two flights the answer might well have been forgetaboutit....
there's also going to be a human factor involved too when it comes to manual reviews. Not only the person/people making the assessment, but potentially the approach of the customer too. eg my recent requests have been more along the lines like "I'm probably asking for too much here but is there any chance...." thus setting up the understanding that I had an expectation of no rather than an entitlement expectation of yes. Potentially the way one approaches the request can be a factor just on a human to human level where a human has discretion. A bit like the old mantra of being polite to agents and other service staff because they can make or break your experience and having a certain attitude will not endear you.
Anyway back to the YM.. yes the programmed in limits can apply to routes, flights on routes, days and even specific flights on specific days (an example of this might be flights into Melbourne leading up to the AFL Grand Final).
