Free seats, and fare buckets

I was looking at the number of free seats in Y class on VS15
Sept 9th = 60
Sept 10th = 155
sept 11th = 142

using Continental airlines website, that nicely shows them all, also expert flyer matches up same seat map.

I would have expected see see more of the cheaper fair buckets on Sept 10th compared with the 9th judging by how empty the plane is on the 10th, and less or the same on the 11th

Does this mean there are really a lot more people booked by some means other than directly with virgin on the 10th. When I have booked with virgin we get provisional seats allocated immediatly.

Or virgin is just playing with fare buckets to maximize revenue, and will open up cheaper seats later if lots get left unsold.

[Neil]

MCO is probably the destination that has most seats sold by other parties, with VH being probably the biggest.

I think you are probably trying to work out the Impossible. After many years talking about and looking at how/why revenue management relases certain fare codes/number of seats, I have never seen one a definitive answer and I'm not sure one actually exists. Each flight/route/date will have it's own unique reasons why they are more/less popular and I think they are looking at it on a daily basis.

Looking at the seat map doesn't necessarily tell you how many tickets have been sold for the flight. It just shows you pre-allocated seats. I think some third-party travel agents don't allocate seats by default. Plus, in some situations seat allocation is not available, so there'll be people with confirmed tickets but who do not have allocated seats.

Similarly, availability queries give you a tiny nugget of information on how many tickets an airline is still willing to sell for given fare classes in given cabins. They don't tell you the load -- airlines overbook.

You can't really put these variables together to predict a load (well, you can try...), so your question about fare classes is almost impossible to answer -- we can't tell how busy the flight is, so it is very difficult to predict whether VS will release cheaper fare classes nearer the time.

Or virgin is just playing with fare buckets to maximize revenue, and will open up cheaper seats later if lots get left unsold.

Am not sure they would call it 'playing' but obviously they want and need to maximise revenue - remember no profits = no investments in new planes etc. If people are prepared to pay higher prices then why should VS offer more cheaper fares?

Obviously this is not an excact science and they do sometimes get it wrong.

I would say that the vast majority of travellers have NO idea that there are different fare buckets and the people in the row behind them could have paid more or less than they did. Ask the man in the street about 'fare buckets' they are more likely to say 'economy' and 'business class' than stream off a list of fare codes.

Yes VS could offer cheaper fares closer to the date of the flight BUT are you prepared to risk it and not getting a seat OR that the price might actually rise. Thats is the model the LCC use - yes they might have a seat on the next flight but as you are so desperate to get on it they will charge you silly money.