why no last minute deals?

Over the years I have frequently seen statements that the reason
airlines do not offer last minute deals for empty seats is that they
prefer to do the reverse. The claimis the carriers get maximum revenue
from businessmen and other who are forced to pay exceptional premiuims
for last minute flights.

Yet, anyone who has flown often enough knows that the facts belie
this. In more than 50 years of buying air tickets I have rarely
encountered a genuinely full, every seat occupied flight. Even in
this age of alleged revenue maximumization software, I have been on
flights that have many empty seats. I'm speaking of an incidence rate
well below 1%.

To the contraray, a seat vacancy rate of at least 10% seems to be the
norm even on the most heavily booked routes.

Yet, in all that time, I have never heard of a single airline ever
experimenting with offering a genuine last minute walkup fare or,
better yet, a last minute auction to waiting passengers.

An experiment could easily be arranged, in varying forms to learn what
works best, at a few controlled locations, between selected cities or
on selected flights.

For example, an auction would allow that "gotta go right now" flyer to
bid whatever price that means while the flyer who says, "I'll take a
middle aseat in the last row by the lavatory if it's cheap enough"
will fill those enormally empty seats. The airline could even control
factorsd such as more desireable reserved seats would be auctioned
separately and with a reserve bid while leaving that less desireable
seat to be sold to the highest on the sport bidder.

The experiment could test "open call" over "silent bids." I'm sure
eBay could provdie onsite terminals that would handle this at well
placed kiosks.

I have a very strong belief that this would satisfy everyone. But not
one airline, anywhere in the world seems to have tried it even once.

Why not?


CaribeJoe - Moderator
Non-commercial My Caribbean.Info Forums
Free Caribbean Destination Directories
Free advice from Travel Writers
Post your own trip reports and photos
Hotel and Air Deals and Rough Guide Reports
http://www.mycaribbean.info

To the contraray, a seat vacancy rate of at least 10% seems to be the
norm even on the most heavily booked routes.
Yet, in all that time, I have never heard of a single airline ever
experimenting with offering a genuine last minute walkup fare or, better
yet, a last minute auction to waiting passengers.

That is because the airlines have found that the current pricing structure
works--it produces the highest yields. If they get even ONE last minute
traveller who pays full coach (e.g., $1000)--well that sure is a LOT better
than having to cope with 20 people hanging around airports who each want to
pay $50 for a flight, and have to purchase tickets, check bags, and be an
unholy nuisance.

wrote:


Yet, in all that time, I have never heard of a single airline ever
experimenting with offering a genuine last minute walkup fare

Have you ever heard of People's Express?

flown recently ? Haven't seen many empty seats in the last year....and I fly
A LOT !

wrote in message
s.com...
Over the years I have frequently seen statements that the reason
airlines do not offer last minute deals for empty seats is that they
prefer to do the reverse. The claimis the carriers get maximum revenue
from businessmen and other who are forced to pay exceptional premiuims
for last minute flights.

Yet, anyone who has flown often enough knows that the facts belie
this. In more than 50 years of buying air tickets I have rarely
encountered a genuinely full, every seat occupied flight. Even in
this age of alleged revenue maximumization software, I have been on
flights that have many empty seats. I'm speaking of an incidence rate
well below 1%.

To the contraray, a seat vacancy rate of at least 10% seems to be the
norm even on the most heavily booked routes.

Yet, in all that time, I have never heard of a single airline ever
experimenting with offering a genuine last minute walkup fare or,
better yet, a last minute auction to waiting passengers.

An experiment could easily be arranged, in varying forms to learn what
works best, at a few controlled locations, between selected cities or
on selected flights.

For example, an auction would allow that "gotta go right now" flyer to
bid whatever price that means while the flyer who says, "I'll take a
middle aseat in the last row by the lavatory if it's cheap enough"
will fill those enormally empty seats. The airline could even control
factorsd such as more desireable reserved seats would be auctioned
separately and with a reserve bid while leaving that less desireable
seat to be sold to the highest on the sport bidder.

The experiment could test "open call" over "silent bids." I'm sure
eBay could provdie onsite terminals that would handle this at well
placed kiosks.

I have a very strong belief that this would satisfy everyone. But not
one airline, anywhere in the world seems to have tried it even once.

Why not?


CaribeJoe - Moderator
Non-commercial My Caribbean.Info Forums
Free Caribbean Destination Directories
Free advice from Travel Writers
Post your own trip reports and photos
Hotel and Air Deals and Rough Guide Reports
http://www.mycaribbean.info

Finn wrote:

flown recently ? Haven't seen many empty seats in the last year....and I fly
A LOT !


I see a lot of free seats on the 7:35, soon to be 7:00 Saturday morning
flight from SJC-SNA. If you need a nap, you can generally find enough
empty rows in the back. If people knew they could get a cheap fare by
waiting until the last minute, that is exactly what they would do.
Despite what the original poster stated, last minute specials have been
tried before, probably by every major US carrier.

mtravelkay wrote:

I see a lot of free seats on the 7:35, soon to be 7:00 Saturday
morning flight from SJC-SNA.


Weekly last-minute specials tend to be clustered around hubs
or from hub-to-hub. I'm on the UA, AA and Continental lists.
I need to fly PDX-ORD so those deals are few and far between.

Up and down the west coast is regional, I can easily fly PDX-SJC
or -SFO without seven days advance for $200-300. Chicago,
make it 2 or 3 weeks, even a month in advance outside of 1Q.

gld

On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 08:53:54 -0800, "Gary L. Dare"
wrote:

mtravelkay wrote:

I see a lot of free seats on the 7:35, soon to be 7:00 Saturday
morning flight from SJC-SNA.


Weekly last-minute specials tend to be clustered around hubs
or from hub-to-hub. I'm on the UA, AA and Continental lists.
I need to fly PDX-ORD so those deals are few and far between.

Up and down the west coast is regional, I can easily fly PDX-SJC
or -SFO without seven days advance for $200-300. Chicago,
make it 2 or 3 weeks, even a month in advance outside of 1Q.

In general, though, I would think airlines would not try to find ways
to encourage people to fly at the last minute rather than booking
ahead of time. They want to know with at least some certainty well
before the day of a flight how many people will be on it.


tmac


"Money-saving suggestion: let's cut directly to the scene where
Mr. Bush dresses up as an astronaut, and skip the rest of his
expensive, pointless - but optimistic! - Moon-base program."
-- Paul Krugman

http://www.specialplaceinhell.org

Speaking as the original poster of the question, I do appreciate the
many responses. And I do recognize that thread drift is normal.

But I am still hopeful of hearing a real explanation as to why
airlines have never tried offering last minute walkup fares or a last
minute auction at the terminal.

It's not enough to say because the current system of charging a
premium maximizes revenue from businessmen and other who must fly.

Planes still fly with empty seats. To my knowledge, not one airline
has ever tried a genuine last minute walk up fare for those seats or
an auction system that would maximize occupancy.

If no one has ever tried it, how can anyone argue that something else
works better?

CaribeJoe - Moderator
Non-commercial My Caribbean.Info Forums
Free Caribbean Destination Directories
Free advice from Travel Writers
Post your own trip reports and photos
Hotel and Air Deals and Rough Guide Reports
http://www.mycaribbean.info

Planes still fly with empty seats. To my knowledge, not one airline
has ever tried a genuine last minute walk up fare for those seats or an
auction system that would maximize occupancy.

They will sell the same number of seats on a Thursday as they might on a
Friday, but on the Thursday the plane might be oversold and they will have
to bump travellers, while on the Friday there may be 10 empty seats. They
simply cannot reliably PREDICT if there will be last minute cancellations,
or last-minute purchases, or delayed flights so that connecting passengers
will not make it for the flight, or cancelled flights so that there will be
additional unexpected passengers needing to get on.

Because the actual number of passengers that will show up for a flight is
UNPREDICTABLE, the airlines use "yield management" and computer models to
predict the most likely outcomes, and to set up the most profitable
arrangement.

Your proposal ignores all of that, because you want a last minute cheap
seat.

Whether or not there will be open seats is often a matter of what happens at
the last minute, at the gate. And neither the airline, nor airport
security, can possibly afford to have cheap-seat-hopefuls hanging around at
the gate, within the security area, hoping for a last minute cheap seat.
It is not doable because the actual number of travellers is (till the very
last second) unpredictable, and it would be a horrendous complication and
impossible waste of their time for them to try--not to mention being a NOT
profitable option for them.

For flights that are really looking half-empty, they can TRY to drop prices
(and many U.S. airlines offer specials that you can book online starting on
Wednesday for weekend trips to very narrowly defined destinations--these ARE
the last-minute deals you are talking about), but no airline is daft enough
to try to add standby-hangers-on or some crazy auction to the already very
unpredictable reality that some flights wind up OVERsold and some undersold
even though they have exactly the same number of advance reservations for
those flights. They would be daft to screw up the orderly demand and
purchase systems they have for their for airspace, and screw up the yield
management structures they have, and screw up the boarding processes that
are difficult enough as they are, by trying to squeeze a couple bucks out
of cheapskates.

s.com...
Speaking as the original poster of the question, I do appreciate the
many responses. And I do recognize that thread drift is normal.

But I am still hopeful of hearing a real explanation as to why
airlines have never tried offering last minute walkup fares or a last
minute auction at the terminal.

It's not enough to say because the current system of charging a
premium maximizes revenue from businessmen and other who must fly.

Planes still fly with empty seats. To my knowledge, not one airline
has ever tried a genuine last minute walk up fare for those seats or
an auction system that would maximize occupancy.

If no one has ever tried it, how can anyone argue that something else
works better?

IME I have found that if a route has a lot of competition eg DUB - LON,
LON - CDG, a walk up fare is generally quite cheap, probably because the
airline knows you will just go to another desk..
However on a route with just one airline and no competition, the airline
knows the passenger at the counter is probably desperate to get on that next
flight and so is prepared to pay through the roof for a ticket.