Here is something that comes up a lot:
My agent says the flight is full! However when I go to the airlines website there is availability?
Well the airlines have something in place called Flight Optimisation. This means they need to get the flights filled with the best paying tickets. So they release a certain number of cheaper seats depending on the demand on the flight. Then the fares are arranged accordingly, if you need a ticket that is not changeable depending on availability will be cheaper than a ticket that is fully changeable, an example of this would be a Full Y Class economy ticket.
This is how flights are divided up by price from the highest paying ticket to the lowest paying ticket. In essence it is supply and demand and a little bit of luck. Here is what I mean:
F9 A9 Y9 B9 M9 H9 Q9 K9 L0 U0 T0 (This is an extract from Amadeus)
So using the above as an example the seats to the right are cheaper than the left, as you go left you go up to the F which is First class. As you can see from the line above there are seats available from F – K (9 seats). However the cheapest return ticket would be in T class and as you go up the row (to the left) so does the price.
With this being said it can happen that you purchase a ticket today for a flight in 6 months time and someone at the last minute found a cheaper ticket. This could be due to the fact a group has cancelled or there has been a lot of cancellations. The airline would *open* up the flight and the lower classes would be come available. This can be rare and in peak season you generally find the opposite where only full Y class is available.
