Pricing policy

Looking at flight to Shanghai in 5 weeks time - BA are charging £2400 for business and Virgin between £4500 - £6000. When checking the seating plans, VS flights are 10% full. Usually Virgin are slightly cheaper but I wonder why the prices are just plan daft . All that happens is my company transfers flights to Emirates or Lufthansa or even BA and quite a lot of business Ian lost to Virgin.

Virgin will have a revenue department deciding this. How will never become public because that would allow it to be gamed. In the big picture your business and that of your company is trivial to them, if it wasn’t you’d have more clout on fares.

On the lowest fare codes in each cabin, advance purchase is required. I am unsure as to how many days this is with Virgin, but if BA are quoting £2400 to Shanghai & Virgin £4500-£6000 then this would imply that the cheap Z fare Upper Class tickets have been sold on Virgin & cheap restricted Club World fares are still available on BA. Not everyone chooses a seat at time of booking, hence the seemingly open seat-map.

You can all but guarantee that whatever the advance purchase rules are on Virgin will be the same as BA, especially on a route they compete on. As above, Virgin's Revenue Management team can release fares as they see fit to get bums on seats. I have seen Z fares on sale very way within the advance purchase window in the past when flight loads are looking low (selling Upper Class as a Z fare close to departure is cold hard cash on the books - a miles upgrade at the airport makes Virgin no money, unless they can re-sell the original seat).