Thread: Seats Avail vs. Authorized

Revenue management......betting on no-shows.

Also, in some occasions, if you bought a $150 ticket 4 months ago and I had to book a last minute ticket at 3am for $975, even if everybody shows up and passengers have to be denied, more often than not someone in that low fare range would volunteer for a $400 voucher......so basically they are paying you $400 to allow me to pay them $975.

I really hate oversales, but they do make sense sometimes from the dollars and cents side of things, which nowadays is the only side of things..

Originally Posted by ColoAvs19

"..... from the dollars and cents side of things, which nowadays is the only side of things..

You said it all!

Btw, take a look at those NRT flights.......oversales like 40+ per flight..

we're sweating the numbers for DL gateway/NRT/BKK next week. Thank God we have several options to NRT, because the numbers are going berserk!

Originally Posted by Spock

Confirm how this works. Example: (8)(10)(154) , there are 8 seats open available to sell, 10 seats more on top of that number because of no shows.. When I later see (-1)(9)(154), it's trending oversold, 24 hrs later it could look (-3)(7)(154) but the numbers keep going negative until (-10)(0)(154) and a big oversold condition..

Just a correction - it's not 10 in addition, it's 10 that are authorized to be sold. That is, 2 expected no-shows on top of the 8 seats not sold.

We see this in rez all the time. There are some complicated formulas being used to determine the amount of no shows historically not just on any given route but on a given date/departure time. This formula is used to determine the number of seats that can safely be sold with a small likelihood of denied boarding. Many of our flights are oversold a bit but our denied boarding compensation percentage is extremely low. The reason the loads jump around so much is simple, even though it may not seem that way. People simply change their reservations more often than you might think. They pay the fees/add collects and just do it.

Also, I don't know about your airline but mine offers a program called Same Day Confirm which allows people to inexpensively move to an alternate flight the same day within a certain period of time so day of departure loads are tough on a nonrev.

SDC should be offered 24 or at least 12 hours prior to dept........3 hrs is pretty pointless

NWA was horrible but Delta is now just as bad ... The numbers change often and always overnight ... I call this seat bingo .. I have seen 50 seats disappear with no cancelled flights or easy to explain reasons (of course that I know of ... im sure there is plenty that I dont) On the other hand, I have seen 10 seat appear out of nowhere. Thats why my motto is if you dont try, you dont fly!