Crazy Airfare Question

[tyandbash]

Hi, this afternoon I checked Delta. I found a good, (not great) price for 5 of us from NYC to MCO in August. I didn't book at the time because I was at work and was interrupted. By the time I got home the fare had increased $50 and now it has gone up $75. What happened? Now I'm panicked. Does anyone think it will go back down again? Thanks!!

 

[poohbear8]

No one but the airline knows if it will go up or back down. My advice is keep checking as much as you can stand it. I have been known to check hourly if I was watching the fares.

I booked Jet Blue awhile back and found a good deal. I went back in 4 hours later to print my receipt and one of the flights had dropped $5 in price. It wasn't a big drop, but I called and they credited it to me for a future flight. That night I checked again and the price was higher than I had paid. So yes, I have seen several price changes in one day.

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

What happened? They may have sold out the lower priced fares. The price may decrease again or it may increase. None of us can know for sure.

 

[charissemp]

Check Bing Travel! Right now it says my flights are dropping or holding steady with an 80% accuracy rate.
I genreally find the best deals 3 months out, so I'm waiting a little longer.

 

[tyandbash]

Thanks! I will check bing now!!

 

[JoWiJo]

It sounds as if you were checking prices from two different computers, but if you were using the same computer (i.e. a laptop), clear all cookies when pricing flights.

I don't know if it's still legal or still done, but a report I saw on TV last year (or maybe in 2010) showed that travel companies would show you an initial price, and if you didn't take it soon, they would bump up the price on you to panic you into buying before the price gets worse. This was proven by using a second computer with no cookies and a clean cache and simultaneously doing the SAME search on the SAME website, yielding higher results for the computer that had done a search on the prior day (or even a few hours earlier). This was true for both air carriers and third party travel sites.

I know it sounds crazy, and you'd be tempted to scout the competition to get around it, but the same companies that did this practice would look for cookies from the competition. If you checked out the competition, they would also be more likely to give you a higher price. In essence, there was no danger in giving you a higher price since the competition would also penalize you in like manner.

Again, I don't know whether this practice is still done, but until I find out a definitive answer that it is not, I'd suggest to make sure that when pricing airfare to have all cookies cleaned constantly. The TV report also suggested using multiple browsers to multitask airfare research, since that would curtail the ability to spy on your cookies.

With all that said, a more likely reason you saw the price hike that much that soon could be simply supply/demand for the flights you want. But just in case, clear your cookies and see if it helps.

 

[KINGBOBOFTHENORTH]

The advice about clearing cookies remains valid. Always start a fresh search. If you go to a travel or airline website and your prior search (origin and destination) pops up on its own, you haven't cleared your cookies.

That said, airlines load hundreds of thousands of fare changes daily. Keep watching, especially when travel is so far in the distant future.

BobK/Orlando

 

[SuzyQue]

Check Bing Travel! Right now it says my flights are dropping or holding steady with an 80% accuracy rate.
I genreally find the best deals 3 months out, so I'm waiting a little longer.

Don't trust Bing. While looking at flights for my daughter to get home for Christmas I had a daily ritual of checking Kayak.com, Orbitz, Bing, etc. On a Wednesday morning around 9:00 ish I was just about to call her and let her know it looked like it was gonna be around $600 (and Bing was telling me to "buy" as prices were steadily increasing). Something deterred me for a little bit and when I went back the price had dropped to $363 on Kayak, so then I checked the airline and they confirmed, so then I checked Bing and they ALSO had dropped the price to $363. I no longer pay attention to Bing's so called predictions.