My friends and I experiencing this funny scenario when booking air Asia ticket for the trip to Kuching (from Singapore) in order to celebrate the Lunar Year 2009 with family(26 Jan 09). We book early because this is the time when most East Malaysia working in Singapore will return home and the flights are very limited. Today is 13 October 08, and we are 3 months ahead of Jan 09. However, in the booking portal at airasia.com, we noticed that there is no flight available for Singapore/ JB to KUching from 21 - 25 Jan and also no flight available from 25 Jan to 3 Feb for Kuching to Singapore/JB. The service of KCH-SIN-KCH by air asia is on daily basis and the plane departed from KCH at 630pm, arrive SIN at 8PM then it will fly back Kuching at 8.30pm to complete the KCH-SIN-KCH service. The funny part is, there are lots seat available on KCH-SIN on 21 Jan, but NIL for SIN-KCH on the same day. Same booking status for flights on following days till the 25 Jan, the night before Chinese New Year. And, from 26 Jan till 3 Feb, no seats available for booking for KCH-SIN, but the flight return from SIN-KCH, lots seat available.
DO you think the seats mentioned above were sold out and fully booked? I dont think so. THe booking for KCH-SIN-KCH was only started only few days ago (26 Sept) and all 1500 seats in that period already sold off, are you sure?
SO, my friends and I concluded that: the airline must have blocked the booking for that extreme high period and only sell them when it is near to 2009. They could definately make a big big profit from there as JB/SIN to Kuching has always been a demanding sectors for MAS/AK during Chinese New Year.
SO, everyone will can fly at expensive tickets...

Well done, your business model is not ethical at all.