Explain airline ticket prices please?

[Ari]

Looking to book a family holiday. Got an apartment all sorted having researched flight prices which were about 400 ish for the four of us.

Went to book the flights, got kicked off the server halfway through. Went straight back in, price had gone up by 50% to about 600!

I know airline prices vary all the time, but 50% whilst in the middle of booking!?

So how do they work? Do they start cheap for every flight and gradually increase as the plane fills?

Once they've gone up, do they come down again, or do they only ever increase?

We didn't book, it felt like we were being held to ransom to be honest, as though they were enticing us with cheap prices then whamming them up once we tried to book them. We hadn't confirmed the apartment at that stage.

Indeed when we emailed the apartment owner to explain our problem and that we were trying to resolve, he suggested trying to book on a different computer as once the airline registers interest from an ISP it then jacks the prices, does that sound likely?

Anyone got any tips to securing cheaper flights?

[jaybirduk]

Price varies on so many factors, basically they have a revenue target they want to achieve for aircraft, I found this site explains it well

http://www.soyouwanna.com/soyouwanna-cheap-plane-t...

What route and Airline was you looking at?

[hyperblue]

Which airline was it? Some of them mess around with prices if you re-visit the site.

[Ari]

It was Flybe to Spain in July.

And I've just realised I meant to put this in "Travel", any chance a mod could move it for me?

[Ari]

Fank U!

[-Z-]

Try again in a day or on a different ip address after deleting cookies. I had this when I was booking 7 of us to fly to Dubai. Because we all had different flying dates I had to book the tickets in batches, as a result Emirates kept putting the prices up. I found that the way to avoid this was to book one batch, wait 15 minutes and then book the others.

[Rower]

[quote=Ari]Indeed when we emailed the apartment owner to explain our problem and that we were trying to resolve, he suggested trying to book on a different computer as once the airline registers interest from an ISP it then jacks the prices, does that sound likely?


That is the case , use another computer.

[Dr Jekyll]

Rower]ri said:

Indeed when we emailed the apartment owner to explain our problem and that we were trying to resolve, he suggested trying to book on a different computer as once the airline registers interest from an ISP it then jacks the prices, does that sound likely?


That is the case , use another computer.

Yes, I've heard this before.

[Sifly]

yep, most booking systems remember your ip address, and so if you go back to look at the same flight after logging out, it will automatically increase the price to try and scare you into booking before the price goes up again! Not cricket really!

[h0b0]

From my experience do as others have said and delete cookies or wait before trying again. Also, tickets always seem more expensive on the weekends and evenings during the week. Book off peak times and it's cheaper. I fly a lot and this seems to help

[Wolff]

or just randomly keep trying! I had a 200 DROP on my tickets to Central America overnight - same computer, same IP, no clearing of temp file or cookies.

Yeah, I couldn't believe it either!! But its true and now I go on holiday in June instead of September.... watch out Mexico, Belize & Guatemala !!!

[Silver993tt]

T

Sifly said:

yep, most booking systems remember your ip address, and so if you go back to look at the same flight after logging out, it will automatically increase the price to try and scare you into booking before the price goes up again! Not cricket really!

This is not the case. Conspiracy theories gone mad. What probably happened was that by booking/selecting a ceratin flight you put the number of reservations/probable reservations through the next threshold when prices would be higher since seats were being/potentialy taken. If after a certain time there is no more activity on that flight, prices will drop back. It's simple business sense.

[jaybirduk]

Silver993tt said:

his is not the case. Conspiracy theories gone mad. What probably happened was that by booking/selecting a ceratin flight you put the number of reservations/probable reservations through the next threshold when prices would be higher since seats were being/potentialy taken. If after a certain time there is no more activity on that flight, prices will drop back. It's simple business sense.

This.

Believe it or not they aren't out to trick you, you are not being followed and the airline isn't recording everything you say in your own home.