LCC allocated seating
Now that Ryanair have moved to allocated seating, I've been pondering the question as to how airlines should allocate seats to those who don't want to pay extra for a seat of their choice. I thought of the following constraints and wondered what algorithm might be the best solution
- Maximise ancillary revenue for airline
- Appear sufficiently random that passengers cannot reliably game the system to get a seat in their desired area of cabin
- Help with weight+balance to optimise fuel burn
- Tend to reward more loyal and profitable customers
- Encourage customers to buy other ancillary services (eg hold baggage) at the same time
- Try to deny expected desired seating where it can reasonably be guessed - single travellers without hold bags should not get seat near exits easily
Anyone have thoughts as to how this might be achieved ?
Remember the seat allocation is done by a computer, not by a human being - quite possible to code up some fairly complex logic on a webserver or reservation system to solve for maximum airline profit