For my airline it doesnt make that much sense now, but i can imagine that bigger airlines have problems to maintance their prices of all there routes, as it take hours to go trough every single route and check if the load factor to the given price is okay. Maybe you can implemtent to the already exisiting tools "Ticket price adjustment" and "Load monitoring" some kind of a combination of both.
It could work like that. Just lower the price for any route, where the load factor for Y/C/F (and freight too) is less than or equal to xx% around +/- x%. Also the other way around: raise the price of Y/C/F (and freight too) where the load factor is above xx% around +/- x%.
For airlines with more than 100 routes it would be much easier to maintance their prices.
Once you start using different seats with different prices on a single route this would be totally useless, as a 5% or 10% price movement would have substantially different effect on standard, leisure, comfort and recliner seats.
And another thing… as has been pointed out quite recently in a different thread, frequently a better approach to increase loads is improving seats and service rather than lowering the price.
Though you are right, I would really welcome people who think about different competitive strategies instead of just raising quality. While the ‘new’ seating model seems to offer more differentiation, the market itself is getting more and more monotonous.
Not to forget the fact that I sometimes use different seatings and different prices on the same route. Sometimes I even use different flightnumbers for the exact same flight, just because there is sometimes only connections on a specific day. E.g. Flight XY 100 operates on days 123x567 at 10:00LT but on day 4 its flightnumber 101 (not changing flighttimes or equipment). Reason for that is, that there are more connections that day because there is a once weekly flight coming in from a certain city operating only on day 4 but bringing in quite some connecting pax. That way I can raise the ticketfare just for that day and particular flight without influencing the rest of the flights.
So to me this tool would not be very effective, but possibly even influence pricing on a route in a negative way. Hope you understand what I mean.
Though you are right, I would really welcome people who think about different competitive strategies instead of just raising quality. While the 'new' seating model seems to offer more differentiation, the market itself is getting more and more monotonous.
Once we get various classes of demand within particular service class (such as ULCC demand, regular economy, premium economy), etc. and fare buckets, and possibly even pricing for connecting city pairs, then there will be more differentiation and dynamism.
Edit: FH, you know quite well, I am sure, that you can reduce price on standard seat in Y to 50% of default and you will not get as good "first" rating (or as I call it, "connection rating") as if you have recliner shorthaul at default Y price, for example. So while your "second" (or as I call it, "O/D rating") can be 99 and be among top dogs for O/D traffic, your "first"/connection rating will be maybe 20-30 or something and that will substantially lower your possibilities to attract connecting traffic.
It could work like that. Just lower the price for any route, where the load factor for Y/C/F (and freight too) is less than or equal to xx% around +/- x%. Also the other way around: raise the price of Y/C/F (and freight too) where the load factor is above xx% around +/- x%.
For airlines with more than 100 routes it would be much easier to maintance their prices.
As has been said, it's not just the price that influences load factor for a particular route.
Just a little example:
My airline has 97% connecting pax. If I have a route X with a load factor of - say - 60% and I reduce its price by half, nothing changes. The load remains almost stable at 60%. It's all about its total connection rating and the offered connection in general. On such routes I guess I'm catering for almost all the demand in the system so that it really doesn't make a change whether I'm asking 50% or 150% standard prices. ;)
I think it is best to focus on the development of a (simplified) fare bucket system, rather than spend weeks on tweaking the current Pricing feature only to then thorw that all in the bin due to a completely new different system. I also think that a simplified Fare bucket system should not be super difficult to implement.
For example, for each cabin class, there would be a standard of say 4 fare buckets. Y would be full fare economy and the other buckets (let's call them X, T, O, N for example, users could use their own letters) would be different percentages of that price. The standard would be for there to be equal numbers of seats for all the fare buckets, but users could choose to for example increase the amount of Y seats and decrease the cheaper fare buckets, etc.
In a more advanced version of the system, you could ev en introduce overbooking. You could have more seats than the amount of physical seats on the plane, and you would have to pay compensation to overbooked pax. That would also require the introduction of pax no-showing of course.
I also think that you don't need separate pricing for connections if you have fare buckets. Instead you could make fare rules saying for example that domestic flights connecting to international flights are booked in class X, etc.
That way AS would become a real airline simulator :)
what difference would multiple fare buckets make ? In real life you use them for price discrimination, since passengers have different preferences (in terms of flexibility, willingness to pay etc). In airlinesim however all passengers within a travel class have the same preferences...