Question re Pricing

[c2lass]

I am looking for flights from ABZ to MUC for June. I prefer what KLM offer which means I could leave ABZ at 6am and be in Munich for 11.00am. I have been watching the price of this flight for a few weeks. Hindsight, which is always a great thing, tells me should have booked months ago.

Anyway, the price of this particular flight is going up and up. My question is if KLM are likely to have a Europe sale in the next few weeks, is it possible this flight will come down in price or the fact the that the price is increasing means they won't reduce it. I know if you look at the other way and you book it today and them in a weeks time it is half the price you would be mighty peed off.

This particular Sat morning flight is at the cheapest rates for all Saturdays in May however the Sat we want, 5th June it has jumped up. Other dates in June are also expensive.

The average for ABZ-MUC used to be around £320 however prices are horrific just now. Lufthansa is just short of £800 and BA not much better at over £700.

I could travel a day earlier and save just short of £200 :eek: however would prefer to travel the Saturday 5th June.

Thanks for any input

[ptr120]

it might come down, but probably won't. Have a look at availability in each bucket at seatcounter.com will give you an idea of how full the flight is.

£200 can buy a nice hotel room and meal in MUC!

[c2lass]

ptr120

Thanks for the link. Had a look but it doesn't make a great deal of sense to me.

The flights I want show and I think the price as at today (£483 for both of us) is class t-v. Could someone please explain?

Klm (http://www.seatcounter.com/forward/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.klm.com&sid=&hint=)1440737ABZ/06:00aAMS/08:40a 91 9 913999 9 99 9 1Klm (http://www.seatcounter.com/forward/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.klm.com&sid=&hint=)1793AMS/09:35aMUC/11:00a 91 9 913999 9 99 9 1

[Capetonian]

This is complex but I will try to simplify it by illustration, but it's hard to explain inventory management simply.

Along the top of the grid, above each number, you have a series of letters, for example :
G L O K S N V Q H M B Y D I J R C

In general (I'm not referring to your KLM ABZ MUC requirement) assume you have a 2 cabin aircraft with 2 physical classes of service, so-called Business and so-called Economy. The Business cabin is generally referred to as C and the rear cabin as Y or M (the first and last letters of MiserY)

Within C class you will have several sub-classes, typically J D I and R (this will vary from airline to airline). The way the airline controls its yields is by allocating each sub-class to a fare type, so for example C will be the full unrestricted business class fare, D will be a restricted fare, perhaps with a cancellation/change penalty, I will be deep discount, perhaps for consolidator fares, and R might be for frequent flyer redemption, freebies, and so on. For the Y class cabin it's more complex with more subclasses.

Assume that the C class cabin has 30 seats. The airline will obviously want to sell as many as possible at the highest fare, so when sales open it might show availability as :
J30 D20 I10 R5
which totals more than 30 because the total does not represent the actual number of seats available, but the 'buckets'. The balance will change as departure approaches according to sales and predicted loads, so when the flight is nearly sold out, it might show J12 D7 I1 R0.

The GDSs, and Seatcounter, only show single digit availability, so anything >9 is reduced to 9, so where you see a 9 there could be 200 seats available, or 11, or 9.

So in Seatcounter, or on a GDS display you will usually see a display such as
Y9 M7 K6 O2 N1 ... etc.

To get back to your actual question, the classes which show a '9' have plenty of seats left, and the ones where you see a 1 or a 3 are almost sold out - they will of course be the lowest fare levels.

Each letter corresponds to a fare basis which usually begins with the same letter as the actual class, for example a YR would be a full unrestricted Y class return and has to be booked in Y, whereas as an MPX1M fare would be a cheaper PEX fare with a 1 month maximum stay and has to be booked in M.

From this you can see that the Y class produces the highest yield and the airline will hold availability in that right up to the end for last minute bookers, and because ideally they'd like to fill the whole aircraft at that fare, whereas the lower yield less flexible tickets sell out first and they will sell fewer of those.

The yield management mix on a Monday morning redeye LHR - MAD would be very different to a lunchtime midweek LGW AGP (Malaga), due to the former being full of 'rich' businessmen and the latter mainly holiday traffic.

The websites do not generally show this information, so you are working blind, which makes it harder to understand. An airline employee using a GDS would see the fare bases displayed and would thus be able to relate each fare type to an actual fare.

Hope this helps.

[PAXboy]

Brilliant Capetonian.

For c2lass, the factors that are used in programming the yield management algorithm are numerous and you can only guess at, probably, the first two.
Big events at either end of the route: Festival; U2 concert (or any other similar sized group); biz convention with 100s or 1000s arriving for exhibition and conference; sporting event. The world cup in South Africa will skew prices for weeks across a range of flights and anyone needing to make a short term booking (such as going to a funeral) will be out of luck.
School holidays.
How many tickets that flight has sold in the last year and on that specific date.
How many pax that flight has carried in the last year and on that specific date.
Feeding to a connection that they want to promote.
Feeding to a connection that they want to demote.
Part of a general sale where they have some spare capacity and hope to sell a few more seats.
A deal with a tour company to promote a destination or festival or sporting event.
Just changed a/c on the route and want to pump it up (or slim it down)
Competing with another carrier, so drop prices.
Not competing with another carrier, so raise prices.
The carrier's computer watches the prices of their competitors on the route and if they raise prices then there is a decision to stay lower and maybe sell more tickets or raise a bit more and maybe make a bit more cash.
... :}

[c2lass]

Capetonian - THANK YOU so much for that information. Although it is quite complex I really have a better understanding now. What an eye opener though. I bet the majority of people have no idea what lies behind the pricing structure!!

PAXboy - Thank you also. Again things you wouldn't really think of.

Well now I am just waiting to hear back from the people we are renting the apartment in Bodenmais from to see if they can accomodate us the Friday night and if so I will book for Friday 4th June and save myself a few ££££, unless of course the price comes down in the meantime.

All you peeps who live near London airports don't know how lucky you are when it comes to cheap flight prices :cool:

[Two-Tone-Blue]

I would like to add my thanks to Capetonian there ... I had a reasonably good idea of how it all works, but that [combined with the link posted earlier] creates clarity.

So ... my pre-booked BA LHR-IAD in April is looking pretty empty :eek:

[Anansis]

Thanks Capetonian and Paxboy. Some thouroughly interesting information there :ok:

I'd like to share some of my own experiences in the context of what is written above if I may. I am a travel obessed university student. I love to travel, but I have to do it on a tight budget! I am constantly looking for good deals to new destinations I've never visited before. As a result I've experienced the contradicary nature of airline pricing policy's first hand many times.

One good trick to get around it is to try and book each segment seperately (I know Lufthansa have a multi segment option, not too sure about KLM, SAS or BA). For example, insted of booking ABZ-AMS-MUN return, try ABZ-AMS then AMS-MUN. It will all on the same ticket and as such part of one single contract. This means that the contract must still be honoured if you have a delay on one of the sectors. I have found that sometimes you can get a ticket considerably cheaper this way, especially if you factor in some longer layovers (although this isn't always necessary). The process can be tedious (you have to manually search every connection) but it can be rewarding. On a few occasions I've used this trick to get a free stopover in Bangkok when flying to Hong Kong. Not only did I save on the £75 charge each way for a stopover, I also paid over £100 less than I would have done if I'd have flown to Bangkok direct!

If you can't find a good fare searching for seperate sectors I'd hold out for a cheaper fare if I were you. Easyjet fly from Edinburgh to Munich direct so I'd keep this in mind as a plan B if things get too expensive. I'd say that the best time to book a LOCO fare is about six weeks before travel so if by mid April, KLM's prices are stupid then go with Easyjet. In the meantime I'd keep checking KLM et all daily (probably using skyscanner.net- a great price comparision website!) and book the flight when/if the price becomes more reasonable (i.e. they decide to change the balance of those 'buckets').

Good luck anyway. Please let me know how you get on.

Anansis

[c2lass]

Anansis

Thanks for your tips and suggestions. I have just priced ABZ-AMS and the cost for that leg along is £345 for both of us :sad:

I have a choice of going out on the Saturday as originally planned at a cost of £483.40 or going out on the Friday at a cost of £337.40. I am very much swaying to booking the Friday which will save £146. If the apartment people cannot put us up that night we could always stay in Munich and have a day sampling some fine German Weiss beir :ok:

Have also looked at the Easy Jet from EDI and also expensive at a staggering £569.96 :{

[eastern wiseguy]

Presumably then the reason why consolidators are/were refferred to as "bucket shops"? I live and learn.:ok:

[Anansis]

Ezy almost £600!? :mad:!! In my previous post I was actually referring to booking each of the four sectors individually on one single multi segment itiniery, not two separate trips connecting in Amsterdam. Having just tried it I don't think it's possible on KLM, though it is a good tactic to try in the future if you get the oppertunity.

Good luck!

[c2lass]

Well I have booked the Friday flights. Didn't want to risk it however knowing my luck KLM will no doubt announce a Europe sale on Monday :ouch:

Returned from Dubai in last month with KL/AF and total cost for 2 seats was only £580 so unbelievable how expensive getting to some parts of Europe are, except of course if you live in London :)

[jubilee]

c2lass,
A little late now,but you may have had a better deal with BMI/Luthansa via Manchester. AS an alternative, FlyBe or BMI to Man then EasyJet.
Jubilee

[c2lass]

Jubilee, thanks for the information. I did try BMI/Lufthansa but the cheapest option with them is a staggering £737.48 :mad:

[archieraf]

Sorry I know this is a bit late for you this time too but it's always worth looking at SAS when flying from Aberdeen. You can get to Munich via Copenhagen with them from ABZ for approx £300. Biggest problem I have with SAS is that there are no Saturday flights to speak of out of ABZ, but other than that I find them pretty good.

Hope that helps for future travel plans.

[OverRun]

I just took a look at ABZ-MUC for 5 June using ExpertFlyer.com (which is a really great facility for checking what fares, connections, seats and all sorts are available - I've done the trial and now I've signed up). I see a range of fares one-way with no availability - sold out - in the GBP 19 / 30 / 42 / 55 / 58 / 66 price range.

What is still available is BA have 109 GBP one way in M class, and 144 in K class (both with seats). SK (SAS) have 110 GBP and 132 in U and W class respectively.

Here is the BA routing (not sure what it all means):
ABZ-MUC SAT-05JUN10 BA
TAXES/FEES NOT INCLUDED
ADULT FARES
CX FARE FARE C AP MIN/ SEASONS...... MR GI DT
GBP BASIS MAX
6 BA 109.00 MNCLON1 M | R EH

ORIGIN ADDON ROUTE: 1111
YY - MEANS TRAVEL VIA ANY PARTICIPATING CARRIER\'S NONSTOP OR
DIRECT SERVICE.

SPECIFIED ROUTE: 1104
YY - MEANS TRAVEL VIA ANY PARTICIPATING CARRIER.

ABZ-KOI-ABZ-LON-MUC
ABZ-SDZ-ABZ-LON-MUC
ABZ-LON-MUC

Good luck.

[c2lass]

Archieraf. Thanks I did consider SAS as I usually check flights through Skyscanner or Kayak. As you say, no Saturday flights though.

OverRun. Had a look at the Expert Flyer website but too much of a grippy Scot to purchase :ooh: I just cannot believe how expensive BA are for this route. We have flown BA on this route a few times before but the price is now nearly double what it used to be.

So far so good, KLM have not announced a Europe sale...... yet!!

[Rusland 17]

I just cannot believe how expensive BA are for this route. We have flown BA on this route a few times before but the price is now nearly double what it used to be.That's probably because you've left it very late to book - it's all about yield management, and the fares you have been quoted suggest that the flight you want to take is already quite full.

BA's lowest return fare between ABZ and MUC is about £180.

[c2lass]

Rusland 17. Thanks for your reply. I have been looking at these flights for months now. We booked the accommodation last September. In fact last year we flew BA albeit through Airmiles and for the two of us it was £160 cash and 1000 Airmiles which was an excellent deal. :cool: Especially bearing in mind 1000 airmiles equates to about £60.