As I understand, a flight is listed the moment there is three days to it's departure, but it becomes bookable only when there is three days to it's landing.
If the above is correct, then it means that many long haul flights only get to benefit two booking rounds instead of the intended three.
Example:
Flight X departs at 12:00 and lands at 20:00 (8 hour flight). The departure airport (or any airport that has connections to that flight) books at 13:00, it would not be able to book on the flight X three days away as that flight is not yet bookable.
Why is it like that ? Wouldn't it make more sense to have the flight become bookable once there is three days to departure ?
probably the additionally required computing power is an issue.
also, while being stated that every flight gets three booking cycles by most board members, this has never been the case (at least connections were never completely considered three times, garantueed, no matter how short the flight). and I am not sure the team ever officially said that three booking cycles are the intended number. so it kind of is the way it has always been, but was just mis-construed.
Same happened with me. My flight departs 7:45 am while demand calculation is shortly after at 7:50. I assumed that this would mean that my flight should get some bookings immediately after it gets booked onto the system but I saw there were no bookings on the flight at all. Then I saw your post.
This would mean that my flight would only get two bookings initially.