Distressed Inventory – How Do Airlines Get Rid of Seats?

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ozfflyer

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have been looking at flights to EU & USA/Canada for next school holidays starting around mid November.

There seems to be reasonable loads end of November to around 20 December & again 1st week of January, but outside those periods, many flights seem to be only 1/3 to 1/2 sold, which is very low only 3-4 months out.

Hard to cancel flights, as might have decent loads in one direction only.

With school holidays in Qld( & Vic I think) starting tomorrow & NSW in a week & most airlines having crazy numbers of seats unsold for the long school holiday period, what do the yield managers do ?

Do they

1) offer agents more commission? (heard that something like 65% of international tickets ex Australia sold by agents - not sure how much of that is online)
This would be self defeating if all airlines did it

2) dump prices further to public? (already doing that in many cases & not working - some airlines have student fares, under 31 fares, teacher fares) or to the industry ?

3) offer long payment terms by credit card at no interest, where pax might even be paying off their airfares after their trip.

4) all of the above

5) or something else, like free stuff, eg. credit for hotel/cars/trains/theme parks etc. etc. Obviously if pax aren't going anywhere at present, none of these entities will be selling anything.

or 6) offer individual travel consultants incentives like, sell $x of us get free flights somewhere, with a fall back if someone sells just short of the mark.

Many marketing managers are probably under the age of say 45, who were 18 during the last recession & have no idea how to handle recessionary trends.
 
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School holidays start 15 Nov?

News to many students... and teachers!

You might want to let the government know as well, so they can update their school zone flashing lights.
yep. Start this Fri in Qld, although kids seemed to have been doing stuff all for weeks. Schoolies starts Sat.
 
Haven’t we already had half a dozen + threads started by OP on basically the same topic? Why more spam? :rolleyes:
not spam at all. Just wondering ... something has to give soon. The recession has already claimed many airlines. Which one servicing Australia will be next to fold or have to cut back enormously.
 
interestingly, a banner advert appeared for $899 return to LAX/SFO. Obviously not peak season, but who's going to be 1st to buckle ?

Spam - nope

I'm not selling anything
 
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There must be several million of aussie year 12 schoolies with tens of thousands in their pockets desperate to fly to the US for a weeks break with their mates. Why aren't they flying??? ;)
 
That's only year 12. Of one state. The 11 other grades in QLD are on 14 Dec.: Future school holidays and term dates

Or were you expecting a schoolies led recovery of the aviation market?
no all other years finish 2 weeks later except for state schools. NSW a week later. Lot of schoolies go to Fiji & Bali apart from Gold Coast & feral Byron bay.

As far as USA is concerned, I’m predicting HA will cut BNE/HNL to twice a week.

FJ have already reduced their NAN/LAX services. They were going to go 6/week with new A350s which have 60 something more seats than their A332, to 4/week. A330s do the other days.

QF are basically going back to daily BNE/LAX as the extra 6 BNE/LAX services become BNE/SFO & BNE/ORD.

Will VA cut any LAX services ?

Who can substitute a smaller aircraft ?

NZ could replace a 777 with a 787.

Could DL do the same ?
 
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I have 3 grandkids in QLD private schools.

One finishes up 6th DECEMBER, the others on the 13 DECEMBER.
 
QF are basically going back to daily BNE/LAX as the extra 6 BNE/LAX services become BNE/SFO & BNE/ORD.

But they're not cutting capacity to the US, just to LAX, in favour of other hubs. I am not sure you can read anything into this other than that.
 
But they're not cutting capacity to the US, just to LAX, in favour of other hubs. I am not sure you can read anything into this other than that.
ok, but 13 times a week BNE/LAX was a bad move. With economy going down the toilet, maybe these will have to be cut also ?
 
Spam - nope

I'm not selling anything


It appears that you don’t understand what spam is. There is no requirement to be selling something, simply the repetition of the same message which is exactly what you do. You could confine your topics to 2 or 3 threads like anyone else would do but for some reason you choose to spam us over and over with new threads containing similar or identical content.

Spam - by any measure a resounding yep!
 
Nah. Xmas is getting closer yet marketing dept at many sirlines foes not know what to do. At lrast qsntas offers double ff pts. Wonder if they with triple or quadruple pts ?

School holidays might be starting, but that doesn't mean the parents have holidays. Most people get 20 day's annual leave. So I wouldn't expect all flights to be full this early out.
this isn't early it's very very late. Talking next month & after. Majority book their long haul holidays well out. Its almost too late for de/jan travel now. Most Australians gets 4 weeks or more paid leave. Teachers get up to 15 weeks paid leave & also get cheaper airfares.
 
It's not too late for Dec/Jan travel. Many students and people working overseas will be travelling home to spend Christmas and new Years with their families. Flights immediately around Christmas will be full, and then the 'creep' to earlier days starts as flights fill up. Some students will also wait until they have finished exams before booking flights.

Teachers may get extended holidays, but you can't expect AA, QF, UA and AC to fill every single TPAC flight, every day, with teachers.
 
What’s getting you so much more excited about this year than last? Apart from, um, RECESSION?

One would almost think you have access to confidential and proprietary information the way you keep carrying on. Almost.
 
It's not too late for Dec/Jan travel. Many students and people working overseas will be travelling home to spend Christmas and new Years with their families. Flights immediately around Christmas will be full, and then the 'creep' to earlier days starts as flights fill up. Some students will also wait until they have finished exams before booking flights.

Teachers may get extended holidays, but you can't expect AA, QF, UA and AC to fill every single TPAC flight, every day, with teachers.
I would suggest 99% of students & teachers would have booked any long haul flights 6 months or more ago. Look at sta travel, they have special deals with quite a few airlines for teachers/student fares which are often much cheaper than adult fares.
 
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