Qantas & Virgin Systematically Increase Business Fares Closer to Departure

If you want to buy a domestic Business Class ticket, you can often find some reasonable deals when booking well in advance. But both Qantas and Virgin Australia systematically increase their domestic Business airfares at specific times, as each flight’s departure date gets closer.

Because of this, you can often find the cheapest domestic Business Class fares if you book at least 28 or 45 days before departure – depending on the route and airline.

Conversely, if you’re booking at shorter notice, you’ll likely end up paying more. In some cases, the price difference is huge. (This is one reason why using frequent flyer points for last-minute domestic bookings, if there is reward seat availability, can be particularly good value!)

There’s another implication of this. Many business travellers book Business Class tickets for the flexibility of being able to change their flight time closer to departure without paying a change fee. But you still have to pay any fare difference. If the airline is systematically charging higher fares closer to departure, you’ll probably have to pay more to change your flight – even if the same fare class as you originally booked is theoretically still available on the new flight.

Qantas & Virgin put advance purchase requirements on their cheaper Business fares

If you’ve ever tried to book a flight at the last minute, you’re probably already well aware that airlines raise fares close to the departure date.

The theory is that people booking at short notice are more likely to be either business travellers or desperate to travel, and therefore willing to pay more. (This can unfortunately screw over people needing to travel for funerals or urgent medical issues, which is why some airlines offer compassionate fares in these circumstances.)

On the other hand, flyers booking further in advance are more likely to be price-sensitive leisure travellers.

On a given flight, an airline will typically offer a limited number of seats at each price point (known as an RBD or “fare class”). As the cheaper fare classes sell out, the airline will remove them from sale, causing the lowest available airfare on that flight to increase. This is based on supply and demand, and is why flights with fewer available seats are likely to cost more.

That makes sense, but it’s not all that’s going on in the background…

Both Qantas and Virgin Australia stop selling their cheaper Business Class fares, or raise the cost of the fares they’re selling in the lowest fare class, at exactly midnight on a fixed number of days before a flight’s departure date. They do this systematically, regardless of the number of seats already sold on the flight.

Virgin Australia advance purchase requirements

This isn’t just a theory. On its domestic airfares, Virgin Australia literally puts this condition in the fare rules that apply to its cheapest “D” class domestic Business fares (our bolding):

CONFIRMED RESERVATIONS FOR ALL SECTORS ARE REQUIRED AT LEAST 28 DAYS BEFORE DEPARTURE ON EACH TRIP. WAITLIST NOT PERMITTED. TICKETING MUST BE COMPLETED BY 1159PM 3 DAYS AFTER RESERVATIONS ARE MADE OR AT LEAST 28 DAYS BEFORE DEPARTURE WHICHEVER IS EARLIER.

For example, Virgin Australia has one-way Sydney-Melbourne fares available in Business from $370 if you book at least 28 days ahead, or starting from $441 otherwise.

As far as I can tell, this 28-day advance purchase requirement is pretty consistent across all Virgin Australia domestic routes. Virgin has different policies on its international routes.

Qantas advance purchase requirements

With Qantas, the cheapest time to book depends on the route. I’ve found examples where Qantas increases domestic Business Class airfares either 60, 45, 28, 14 or 7 days before departure.

On many routes, Qantas increases the cost of its cheapest “I” class domestic fares by around $50-100 at the 45-day mark. Then, closer to departure – often around 28 days beforehand – it removes those (already slightly more expensive) cheaper fare classes from sale altogether.

This is literally written into the fare rules for Qantas domestic “I” class fares. For example, this is an excerpt from the fare rules for the Melbourne-Sydney route:

CONFIRMED RESERVATIONS FOR ALL SECTORS ARE REQUIRED AT LEAST 28 DAYS BEFORE DEPARTURE ON EACH TRIP. WAITLIST NOT PERMITTED. TICKETING MUST BE COMPLETED BY 1159PM DAY RESERVATIONS ARE MADE OR AT LEAST 28 DAYS BEFORE DEPARTURE WHICHEVER IS EARLIER.

As an example, if you book at least 45 days in advance, Qantas has one-way Business Class fares available on the Sydney-Melbourne route starting from $554. But if you book 28-45 days in advance, the minimum price is $604. Book less than 28 days before departure, and the lowest available fare becomes $1,096.

On trans-continental routes from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to Perth, the cut-off to get a much better Qantas Business Class fare is 60 days before departure.

How much do the cheapest Business fares change closer to departure?

To give you an idea of just how much you can save on domestic Business Class fares by booking further in advance, let’s look at some specific examples…

Virgin Australia domestic Business airfares

Here’s a comparison of the lowest available Business fares available on Virgin Australia when booking more or less than 28 days in advance:

Route	Lowest Business airfare 28+ days in advance	Lowest Business airfare < 28 days before departure
Sydney-Brisbane	$349	$411
Sydney-Gold Coast	$349	$410
Melbourne-Sydney	$370	$441
Melbourne-Brisbane	$390	$461
Sydney-Adelaide	$410	$503
Adelaide-Perth	$564	$719
Brisbane-Darwin	$718	$894
Perth-Sydney	$1,296	$1,440

You can sometimes get lower fares than what’s shown in the table above by using a Virgin Australia discount code.

Qantas domestic Business airfares

With Qantas, the exact timing and amount of the minimum Business Class fare increase depends on the route. For example, at the time of writing, these are the fares available at different points before departure on the same eight domestic routes that we looked at in the previous section:

Route	Cheapest lead-in Business fare (days before departure)	Increased minimum Business fare (days before departure)	Highest minimum Business fare (days before departure)
Sydney-Brisbane	$549 (45+ days)	$599 (28-45 days)	$1,066 (<28 days)
Sydney-Gold Coast	$510 (45+ days)	$640 (<45 days)	–
Melbourne-Sydney	$554 (45+ days)	$604 (28-45 days)	$1,096 (<28 days)
Melbourne-Brisbane	$599 (14+ days)	$1,374 (<14 days)	–
Sydney-Adelaide	$599 (45+ days)	$650 (28-45 days)	$1,122 (<28 days)
Adelaide-Perth	$818 (45+ days)	$918 (28-45 days) or $1,318 (7-28 days)	$1,676 (<7 days)
Brisbane-Darwin	$999 (28+ days)	$1,749 (<28 days)	–
Perth-Sydney	$1,618 (60+ days)	$3,015 (<60 days)	–

The moral of this story

Airline price discrimination and advance purchase requirements are nothing new. It can be annoying if you’re booking at short notice. But by understanding the mechanics of it, you can get a better deal!

For domestic Business Class, it pays to book at least 28 or 45 days in advance – or whenever the relevant cut-off time is for your route and airline.