Is there a way to change the ticket price on a flight that’s already being booked into the departure list?
For example:
I have an domestic economy route traveling between two points at $120 a ticket, once a day seven days a week.
i.e. the next 3 days = 6 flights @ $120.
A competing airline is on the same route traveling at the same frequency is doing so at $89 a ticket.
i.e. The next 3 days = 6 flights @ $89.
Now say I want to change my ticket pricing for the next three days from $120 to $89 so as to maintain competition, can I do that?
I’ve tried altering the ticket price in Route Manager both by route and flight however it apparently doesn’t apply to already booked flights. I’ve also tried cancelling the booked flights and re-executing the schedule at the new fare however that doesn’t seem to work either as the flights aren’t ‘re-booking’. I suppose the only other option would be to delete the flight from my flight number list and re-create it in the schedule?
I may have just talked my way through solving my problem but we’ll see, does anyone else have any answers?
I just tried deleting cancelling and deleting the $120 flights and rescheduling new flights. The new flights gone into the booking list for the next three days at $89, so that’s good, albeit slightly cumbersome having to reschedule. I can’t imagine it being so much of a problem on a small network but on a big one it could get quite tiresome.
If you cancel a flight, you have to refund the passengers who already booked a flight.
If a competitor uses smaller seats, or offers less on-board service, his prices should be lower or he won’t get any passengers. In other words, if your plane is for example equipped with EcoPlus seats in economy, you can safely sell your tickets for more money. You have to if you want to make a profit. You can check the cabin configuration of your competitor if you check the fleet list, but it is easier if you check the ORS. If your flight is higher rated, you don’t have to drop your prices.
If you use "activate flight schedule now", your first flight (tomorrow) will only get one chance to book passengers. Only routes with a very high demand are fully booked in one day. In most cases it is wiser to use "activate with three days delay". In that case passengers have three days to book a ticket.
I was aware of the refund system and the other factors. The situation was more a case of (being new) I opened up a route where two competitors were already waging it out over prices and the default route price which I hadn’t altered before assigning flights was quite a bit above what the competitors were flying at leaving me with very low loads. The example I gave was a bit more watered down than the actual situation but I just wanted to see if it was possible!
This bit I wasn’t aware of, well sort of. I hadn’t realised it was essentially 3 waves of passengers booking their flights, but now that I think about it it makes perfect sense. Isn’t it funny how you can over complicate things in your mind if you think too much about it! Anyway, in my scenario it was a brand new route so I figured I was better off paying off the small amount of passengers that had already booked and trying to compete and maximise load opposed to flying at 12-18% loadings for three days!
if I want to try out a new route, I remove one return flight from an existing schedule and replace it by one return flight to the new destination. Just one return flight on one day. I then activate the changed schedule with a three day delay and restore the original flight after the inserted flight appears on the flight list. That way I perform one return flight that gives me three days to see how many bookings I get. If bookings are too low, I cancel the flight. Like you say, it is cheaper to pay a refund than to fly an empty plane.
And if the plane gets fully booked, or fairly well booked with many transfer passengers, I buy or lease an extra plane to fly that route.
Thanks for sharing. I’m sure that once I become more comfortable with the game system I’ll be able implement some of it. Right now I’m tending to see what does and doesn’t work!
