Revenue management

The airline discipline of deciding, continuously, how many seats to sell at which prices — the forecasting machinery behind fare buckets, advance-purchase rules and the way prices move as departure nears. Understanding that a human-tuned algorithm is managing scarcity explains most "weird" airfare behaviour: prices dropping mid-season, closing suddenly, differing wildly by day of week. Negotiated contracts exist because revenue management also values guaranteed volume — that is the trade the private channel is built on.