[Udo]

The screenshots in the article support your statement. However, don't you think this is practice grossly misleading? It's common, especially on low-cost flights, to gradually ramp up the seat price as the tickets are sold. Sometimes (and this seems to be such an example), this means no single seat costs the same as the next one sold - but that doesn't mean there are huge price differences between buying seat n and n+1.

Don't you agree that the user's perception of this UI is that fake scarcity tactics are being employed?

[hrush]

Udo -- the practice of ramping prices up and down is called Yield Management and is a commonplace strategy for suppliers of perishable inventory such as airlines and hotels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management

We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available. Our hope is that most users will be able to make better decisions about whether to book immediately or to wait a little longer.

With respect to whether the price differences are huge or not, the prices are going to be higher. Travel is an extremely price-sensitive category and India is an extremely price-sensitive market. So, in our opinion, this feature lets users make better decisions.

Since the button seems to be causing some confusion, we'll see what we can do to best improve it.

[Udo]

I feel that maybe I didn't express myself clearly, apologies. The main point from a user experience design perspective here isn't that Yield Management is happening (which is perfectly OK, the article just didn't recognize it). Instead it's this:

> We wanted to our users to be able see how long a price point is going to remain available.

On a flight where every single seat represents a discrete price point, this information becomes dubious at best. What's more, the UI on your website makes the semantics of this very murky, culminating in unnecessary misunderstandings like this article.

To make it perfectly clear: I'm not suggesting there is anything wrong with your business practices. Instead, the fault lies with your user interface for not making the distinction clear between the number of seats available on the flight in general and the number of seats left at the current price point (which is almost ALWAYS equal to the number of seats the user has requested).

[philjohn]

Perhaps "1 seat left at this price" would be a less confusing.

[hrush]

Yep. We agree that we need to work on improving the design of the feature and we will be doing just that. “X seats left at this price” is a better label, but may be too long to fit for the way it is currently designed, so we will need to think about how we can best convey the information better.