quattroworld

When airlines compete on the same route they basically know each others loads and can play with the price.

Also each airline does it differently but on all routes they allocate only a small amount of reduced price seats and once they are sold the price for the other seats remain at or close to full fare especially if the plane is nearly full.

Just a few weeks ago, when I had to fly out to Anchorage via Vancouver and Seattle to crew our aircraft, we had reserved our seats on Air Canada for our departure on the 26th at the reduced Business Class fare.

This saves money vs.the full fare Business Class ticket but is restricted in what can be done with it like no refund and a $200 fee if you need to change your flight.

Now not 24 hours later the passengers decide to change their departure date and time from Anchorage which meant I needed to change my departure date out of Montreal.

Because it was the US Thanks giving we had to move our flights by two days out of Montreal to the 24th. This now meant the the $200 policy for flight change was out the door because we were now leaving within 5 days of the new departure date... The new ticket and its difference in price was approximately $1350 extra just for the flight from Montreal to Vancouver!

BTW, the Airbus 330 to Vancouver was completely full with passengers on the standby list hoping to get on. The flight back from Vancouver to Montreal, a Boeing 787 was also completely sold out with a stand by list too. The same was true of the flight from Seattle to Anchorage and back and the flight from Seattle to Vancouver.