Crescent Pricing

[vacuvo]

Hello friends, my name is Vic, I'm new to this forum but not new to riding Amtrak. I'm looking for some good advice, so anything you can add would be appreciated. We are looking to take a group of scouts from ATL-BHM on the Crescent, February 18, 2022. Since group reservations require payment in full 90 days in advance of your trip, I ruled out that option a long time ago. Few people, especially folks with kids can plan that far into the future. So my thought was just to have everyone purchase on their own. I understand Amtrak has three pricing classes in coach: saver, value, flexible. The problem is the only fare available is flexible for this date! The train is only showing 10% full. When I had booked a speculative group reservation (that I let expire) earlier this year it showed the train was 50% full and blocked the lower fare classes. When the group reservation expired I scooped up 2 child and 2 adult fares at the saver level. ($66) If I wanted to book the same four seats on Christmas Eve or New Years Eve (also on a Friday) the lowest price saver fares are available. In fact, almost every date I checked (including holidays) were either saver or value prices. Is this a pricing mistake, incompetency, or yield management gone wrong? Does Amtrak ever open up the lower fare classes in a situation like this? I would like to give some good advice to my parents at our meeting next week. Thanks for your help!

 

[niemi24s]

I understand Amtrak has three pricing classes in coach: saver, value, flexible.

Amtrak has chosen those 3 titles for fares, but there are actually 6 different Coach fares. For ATL<>BHM their monetary values are 22, [28], 44, [55] , 67 and 84 dollars. Those in the square brackets are estimates as only 4 different fares were found in the short time spent looking.

I'll let others provide their answers to your questions about the "why". I only dabble in the "what".