Originally Posted by
marcal
Prob the same reason that restaurants don't slash their prices towards closing time. If you are known to slash at the last minute, everyone waits until the last minute. They prob make more from last minute FCFL(I do this regularly when flights dont look great). It would obviously be great for us, but not ideal for them.
United does exactly that for its employees though. Confirmed employee-only fares booked many weeks / months in advance are generally comparable to our FCFL fares. If a considerable number of seats remain open a day or two before departure, they drop their employee fares sharply (I’ve seen as low as $40). It’s all based on revenue management’s algorithm predicting that the seats are highly unlikely to be sold to paying customers.