Expensive to travel this weekend!

December 26, 2007 9:45 AM

Priceline flights going up $80 in minutes?

I searched for a flight from NYC to MSN this weekend, and an hour later, it had gone up $80. Is this normal?

posted by roomthreeseventeen to travel & transportation (5 comments total)

Yes.
posted by alan at 9:51 AM on December 26, 2007

Absolutely. It'll go back down in another hour, then up $100 in 20 mins, and so on and so on.
posted by pdb at 9:58 AM on December 26, 2007

Some months ago, I booked a flight on Air Canada that went up about 60 bucks between me selecting the fare and then hitting the "purchase this ticket" button (1 minute max). "Sorry, that ticket is no longer available at that price." So, yes.
posted by outlier at 11:39 AM on December 26, 2007

Rates have also increased because of weather conditions and holiday demand. As a whole, however, the airline industry is reacting to news of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act's effect on fuel prices.
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:46 PM on December 26, 2007

If you can finagle access to the actual reservations systems, like what travel agents use, you can see what's going on. Airline tickets have a lot of different fare classes, within a broader class like Economy or Business. Each class is priced differently, and each class has a certain number of seats allocated at any given time. When a certain class sells out, the price you see will instantly jump to the price of the next lowest available class. That's why Expedia will sometimes say "Hurry, there are only 3 tickets left at this price!"

Sometimes the price goes back down though, because the airline will add more seats to the lower-priced classed, if they aren't selling at the higher price.
posted by smackfu at 8:51 AM on December 27, 2007