Can someone please explain the airlines

[Squidnation]

The airline ticket pricing system has got to be the biggest damn scam on earth. I don't understand it whatsoever and I am wondering if there is some mathimatical formula or strategy to beating the bastards in the pricing game.

Last week I purchased to tickets to Cancun on my buddy's advice. We paid $500 from Salisbury which is a good price. My buddy got busy and didn't get to buy his ticket. At the time we were 29 days aways from the trip. He finally went to buy his ticket 26 days away from the trip. The price was the same so he went to buy it and screwed up and inputted the wrong cc number. So he had to reprice and retry. $$1,077!!!! I am talking 5 minutes after the price was $500. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?

On the same day I was suppose to purchase my ticket form Guatemala. Connor told me the price was $568. Not bad so I was gonna buy it when I got back from Nico's horse show. While at the horse show Connor calls me and asks if I bought the ticket. I told him no. He said hold off - For some reason the price went up to over $1,000.00 WHY? what is the reasoning for these price flucuations. I bet their is some marketing study that shows that people tend to purchase their airline tickets on Friday nights and saturdays so they go up during those periods. Can anyone explain?

[Glenn W]

Bill, I can't count the number of times the same has happened to me. I don't know all the ins and outs of the airline pricing models (there is secrecy in the specifics), but in general, the major airlines block out seats on pricing ( as opposed to the old way of pricing soley based on advance booking time). There is also a time constraint built into the pricing models, and of course, they vary by individual market demand.
So to answer your quuestion-- the cheap seats available had been booked when you came back to check (or possibly the time constraint had kicked in if a day or 2 later).
In the last year or so, I have found that one must go to the individual airlines sites to book on line in order to get the best prices (as opposed to travelocity, etc.) unbless you are booking months in advance.
For Central America, See if Taca flys out of BWI, they have great prices out of Dulles.

[catchemup]

Bill, I noticed that if you buy mid-week the prices are cheapest. As far as your Guatemala tickets try out of Regan National. We got ours from there to GUA for $424 compared to 500+ out of BWI.

[gradywhite273]

they are worse than telecom agents, economist and car dealers, damn them

[clt_capt]

they are worse than telecom agents, economist and car dealers, damn them

Hell - they are worse than USED car salesmen. At least a used car salseman
will be nice until the sale... The airline folks never give a shit - they figure they've got you by the short hairs from the get go...

[whowantstoknow]

i hear ya..and now they charge you per bag...its not enough u got to be crammed..u dont even get a bag of pretzels...

when i flew to san jose..we reserved the tickets for 24 hours...i bought them 27 hours later and there was a 300$ raise in price. i wound up driving to miami to save 500 bucks...

good luck...i wouldnt wait any longer..it seems like they raise the prices every 10 minutes.

[Squidnation]

i hear ya..and now they charge you per bag...its not enough u got to be crammed..u dont even get a bag of pretzels...

when i flew to san jose..we reserved the tickets for 24 hours...i bought them 27 hours later and there was a 300$ raise in price. i wound up driving to miami to save 500 bucks...

good luck...i wouldnt wait any longer..it seems like they raise the prices every 10 minutes.

Just checked again today. $520. Absolutely crazy. If I had bought my ticket and then seen this today. I would have flipped. Happened a couple years ago going to brazil. We all bought our tickets for $800 but my buddy screwed up and forgot. He finally went and bought his ticket. Thought he was gonna get screwed. $687. Go figure

[neilinov]

I just spent a few days going round and round with airline prices and days of the week. I had some days that I had to travel so they were non issues. I had one heck of a time finding different prices for different days even checking back minutes later. Throw in the point system for good measure and you will go crazy. I don't understand the point system. Where do they come up with these numbers? They used to be set numbers, but now they are all over the place and each different card company has different rules and pricing.

Here is what I found out. If you can avoid it don't travel around any holiday. I booked tickets to the bahamas for easter and paid dearly for them. It was slightly cheaper to travel on the tuesday after easter and return the following tuesday. It cost me 149,000 airline miles to fly from Baltimore to Eleuthera Bahamas.

I also found out that it is cheaper to travel on weekdays than the weekends. I have a trip scheduled to the keys at the end of Febuary. It cost about $150 per ticket to go from Baltimore to Miami Thursday to Tuesday.

Then the worst thing to have to do is to be forced to be inflexible on travel days. I have to go to Miami from the 13th to the 15th of February. I used airline miles to do this leg. Salisbury to Miami and the only miles that I could use were 1st class seats. These cost 150,000 airline miles.

Next week is a trip to Mexico and the cost from Baltimore to Cancun is somewhere around $350 per seat.

I just don't understand how they come up with the cost per seat. They don't seem to have any rhyme or reason to get the pricing whether or not the price is paid in points or dollars. Then they change them seemingly at any second.

The best priced airline that I have found if you have to fly to Florida is Air Tran.

The best credit card point system that I have used is the Bank of America World Points m/c.

[balti]

Heya Bud

i feel for ya...the airlines employ a rather devious price algorithm. Its based on regression formulae and the crunching of alot of data.

there is a website that calculates the price probablity of airtickets. It takes the time period when you book and fly and time of day etc ect
thsi way you can get a good estimate of what you shoudl be paying and could be paying if you book a different day.

Not sure about website details will look for it and post later.

karl

[deadbaiter]

I have found that it is much cheaper to buy tickets at the very last minute, when they are trying to fill the rest of the seats. However, this can be very risky.