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Scarcity, Inventory, and Inequity: A Deep Dive into Airline Fare Buckets

Airline pricing may seem mystifying, but behind every airfare is a complex system of fare buckets and inventory controls. Airlines don't just sell seats - they manage a dynamic inventory of fares, divided into booking classes (fare buckets) with different prices and rules. For the technically curious, understanding how fare

In 1985, armed with this data, American's newly formed yield management team introduced deeply discounted "Ultimate Super Saver" fares - but with strict limits on availability - to undercut People Express without giving away the whole plane at cheap prices. In an NDC world, the notion of filing fares in ATPCO buckets and posting them to GDS is less central - an airline's Offer Management System can calculate a price in real time and return it, potentially not tied to a static booking class. All of this has been shaped by history - from the first computerized reservation systems that replaced manual seat maps, to the yield management revolution that created today's intricate fare class structures, and now to the cusp of a new era with dynamic offers unbounded by A-to-Z booking codes.

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