Angry at AirTran

[sunshinegirl]

So I got that email from Travelzoo with flight specials. I saw that Airtran lowered their rates. I was looking for flights to take the family to visit my mom in Florida over 4th of July.

I saw $67 each way and JUMPED!! Called my mom, called DH, started grabbing credit cards. The only problem is that I am going down early with the kids but DH is bring them back and I am staying late for a conference. We find good flights and start booking. We can't book them together because of the different arrivals and departures. DH and I get our flights booked. All of a sudden, the return flight DH booked is $110 instead of $67! Apparently they only had one seat at that price. Now we start looking for any flight back at $67 and there is exactly one at each price.

To me, that just seems sneaky. Make it look like you have lowered the prices a lot but then only offer 1 seat at each price. .

 

[ldb1030]

Don't think that it's just Airtran! Every airlines does this.Sadly, the fares are capacity controlled.

 

[Jeanne B]

And hard telling how many others were booking at the same time you were grabbing those $67 seats.

 

[rigs32]

There were likely more at that price, but someone else bought them, leaving just the one. If you check airfares on Orbitz, they'll tell you how many seats are available for certain fares.

 

[curiouser]

Stuff like this happens all the time. We learned the hard way you can't waste time calling people you just have to book. Our last trip we called our co-travelers (two other couples) about the great rate and you know what- they got the flight at the great rate and we got shut out. It sucked, big time, so I feel your pain, but that's the airline industry.

 

[sunshinegirl]

We called them and they pretty much told us that there was one seat on each of the flights at the lower rate. Unfortunately, our kids are 4 and 6 so we had no choice but to have all 3 people on the same flight. LOL!

I'll have to try checking Orbitz next time to see how many seats there are at each fare. I was really shocked that the difference between the one sale seat and the next seat up was $43. <gulp>

DH bit the bullet and just booked the more expensive seats for the kids because he would have had to have paid $60 to change his to another flight anyway and even at that, there was only 1 seat left on almost every other flight back for 3 days at the sale fare. .

Hard lesson learned today. Arghhhhhh.....

 

[LegoMom3]

Southwest does this, too. Often their lowest fares are only for a few seats, and they will book FAST! It's an airline standard to offer the last few seats on a flight at a real discount just to be able to fill it and make something off it. An empty seat is lost revenue.

 

[budbeerlady]

Watch daily, Airtran will credit you the diff if the price goes down on the SAME Flight. This happened for us, all summer the price was $97, so I finally jumped and said this is great at $79. Bought 5 seats down and back and we were very happy with the price. 2 months prior to the trip the price one day was $59. I got the $20 pp each way credited to my airtran account. We didnt get cash back and I had 1 year of origionally booking the ticket to use the credit.

So we used the credit to fly us all down first class. It was wonderful and I am now an airtran lover. So wait and see what happens!

 

[sunshinegirl]

Watch daily, Airtran will credit you the diff if the price goes down on the SAME Flight. This happened for us, all summer the price was $97, so I finally jumped and said this is great at $79. Bought 5 seats down and back and we were very happy with the price. 2 months prior to the trip the price one day was $59. I got the $20 pp each way credited to my airtran account. We didnt get cash back and I had 1 year of origionally booking the ticket to use the credit.

So we used the credit to fly us all down first class. It was wonderful and I am now an airtran lover. So wait and see what happens!

I wondered if they did that. I will be on there looking every day for the next 3 months. LOL!

 

[swilshire]

I had the same problem with American Airlines when booking our flights to England for June. I could only get one at the discounted rate online for the date we wanted. I called and the agent I spoke with couldn't do any better, but was nice enough to volunteer that I could book all six of us at the lower rate the day after or the day prior. I ended the call (since they charge a fee to book them on the phone) and went back to do exactly as the young lady suggested. It worked great!

Sheila

 

[Zane_Anthony]

Here is what I have done twice and it always works. I noticed this because when I am checking fares I always just put 1 passanger. Well when I found a price with them I liked I changed the passangers to 3 and all of a sudden the sale fares were gone. So I changed it back to 1 and the sale fare was back so I went all the way through as if I was going to book to the part to where you put the payment information in. I then opened another browser put in 1 passanger, got the good price, and went to the same step. I repeated this a thrid time as well. So now I have 3 browsers open with 3 seats all at the sale price. I then completed the transaction on each of them and got 3 seats at the discounted price. Then as soon as I can check in online I sign on and get our seats and both times we were all together as well. Hope this helps.

 

[fkj2]

I use Sidestep.com to check flight prices. In the past, I've flown one way on Airtran and returned on USAir. You might be able to find something for him coming back one way on another carrier.