Comments on: Expensive to travel this weekend!

Question: Expensive to travel this weekend!

roomthreeseventeen — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:45:57 -0800

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?

By: alan

alan — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:51:01 -0800

Yes.

By: pdb

pdb — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:58:04 -0800

Absolutely. It'll go back down in another hour, then up $100 in 20 mins, and so on and so on.

By: outlier

outlier — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:39:01 -0800

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.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:46:54 -0800

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.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:51:48 -0800

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.