Question on Ticket Prices

[AllInGoodTime]

Just a quick question. I had a spontaneous urge to get on a flight this afternoon to Adelaide from Sydney for mothers day to surprise mum. I was only going to do this if I could get a really cheap ticket. So at 1 pm today I looked on the QF site and all the prices were too expensive for such a quick trip. Checked out the Virgin site, and I could get back to sydney on the weekend cheaply about $100 + Tax, but the sector to Adelaide was $238 + Tax. I checked the online price at 2.45pm and the $238 fare was the cheapest tonight and was for a 16.15 departure - which would have suited me. I then called Virgin and the very nice lady said that there were 18 seats left 90 mins before the flight.
I decided that $400 odd was too much for such a quick trip, but I thought I would watch the online price to see if it would change. At 3.30pm, it was still $238 + tax.

Now after all that, my question is if 90 - 45 mins before the departure there are still 18 seats, why don't the airlines reduce them, so they can sell them. If the price had come down to say $119 + tax for the sector out I would have bought it and rushed to the airport from work, which is near by.

Why fly with 18 empty seats, when surely if they reduced them they could sell them. I am not saying reducing them ridiculously, but if they were reduced to the same as the return sectors I saw, surely they would fill a few extra seats.

Are there any travels agents or airline people out there that can shed some light on this.

cheers

[Animalclub]

There's a whole division in all major airlines called among other things "Yield Control". They don't look at all the flights - they just haven't got the staff to do it so they get a computer generated "Exception Report"... in other words if a flight loading/receipts are outside certain parameters let "me" know so that I can do something about it... either increase the price should the flight be filling fast or reduce the price if the flight is way empty.

Maybe they think that a flight going out with say 18 empty seats is not worth worrying about.

I don't work in "Yield Control" but it used to be like that.

[Ash767]

Hi

I suppose if it were known that an airline sold cheap seats getting closer to the dep time then everybody would wait until the last minute to buy a ticket.

Once a certain number of seats are sold and Fixed/Variable costs are well covered, the other seats remaining are just cream on the cake if sold, so like All in good time said it is probably not worth worrying about those seats.

Ash:ok: