Price of flight gone up within 5 minutes of trying to book online

blindman

Moonchild wrote: »

They don't, 100% categorically don't, but there is no harm in a good MSE conspiracy theory :cool:

One thing to bare in mind is that for many airline booking systems when you check a price on a specific flight it removes the seats from general inventory for a period of time (often around 10-15 minutes) to allow you to complete the transaction. That in effect removes those seats from general sale. It also removes them from sale should you look at other flights, and then come back to try and book these ones. If you did it multiple times, multiple seats would be removed from sale, and inevitably the price would show as rising as there are obviously limited seats at each fare stage.

However, after 15 odd minutes these seats will have been released back into the system, and allow you to book at the original price. If however, you've got exasperated in that period of time, and checked the seats 15 times on 13 different computers, then you are probably best walking away for half an hour

It doesn't make any difference whether you believe me or not, irrespective of your experiences or not, but it does not happen! It may 'appear' to happen quite a lot, but remember that as little as 8 seats may be released at an airlines lowest fare. If you are booking 2 people, that's 25% of the available seats at that price. So if you grab those seats, there's a less than 1 in 8 (?statisticions can help me out here!?) chance that are removing the last cheapest seats, so yes, when you go back to them, the price will be higher.

That's a good explanation and may be what's occurring BUT how do you explain

I live close to work so minutes after this last price check on my work PC of £618.00 I left for home.
At home I logged onto the flybmi.com web-site about 15 minutes after my last attempt at work.
Guess what, the price was now £538.00

I booked this (finally!) and then went to work.
So at work again, about 15 minutes after my successful booking I checked the price again.
Yes, you guessed, it was £618.00

I was also checking different flight dates albeit the same route.

My repeated attempt during the day were spread over the morning hours and were more like a 10 minute research period every hour.

Moonchild

blindman wrote: »

That's a good explanation and may be what's occurring BUT how do you explain

I was also checking different flight dates albeit the same route.

My repeated attempt during the day were spread over the morning hours and were more like a 10 minute research period every hour.

It's a dynamic system. Irrespective of whether you are checking the bmi site, expedia, ebookers, or a GDS in Tonga if you remove those seats from the inventory (albeit temporarily) it would affect everyone elses ability to book those seats.

Lets say in your case (and I would never be arrogant enough to say this is the definitive reason) someone had looked at your flights (and remember it would need be one leg of your flights that is affecting the prices - so someone looking at an itinerary just involving your outbound, or your return flight could have an impact) 10 minutes before you, removing the last 2 seats at £538. You log on and the cheapest
seats are are £618. Fine. Neither of you decide to make a purchase. You go home, check again, and all 4 of the seats, including the 2 at £538 have been released back into the system. Fab. You book them and are happy. You are even happier when you go back to work and see the cheapest price is now £618! Because obviously, you have just booked the last 2 seats at £538.

In terms of clearing cookies, well by the time you've done it, so many transactions will have taken place that there will have been changes to your flights, and of course it stops you muddling things up even more by checking the flights on 15 different websites. In all honesty, save yourself some hassle and make a nice cuppa and relax for half an hour, the end effect will be the same.

blindman

I'm not entirely convinced but I do believe your reasoning has some foundation.

I was only using the BMI site and not looking at any other site (Expdia etc)
I was using permutations of days to see what was the cheapest outbound\return.
I was only looking at the prices, not actually going any further. (Except the first time).
Every time I returned to the site the price had gone up.-(with your reasoning the price should have gone down ).

Either way:
As I said, in this case (of buying airline tickets) it's sometimes not wise to recheck one route several times and if you do see a price hike either wait until another day :eek: or book from another IP address.

Moonchild

There's far more to it than what I have outlined. Having worked for an airline, and working with many airlines, and having many friends who work at airlines the information I've outlined has a large element of fact.

You also need to factor in many other things such as options (i.e. flights being provisionally held), airline sales, and complex yield management software. Basically, there are so many vagaries that you will often see price changes. But your 'cookies' have nothing to do with it at all. But it just makes so much more sense to people that don't work in the industry than all the potential actual reasons.

However, more often than not, you will see non-stop nothing. That BA flight has stayed the same for a week, and you've checked 30 times. However, that goes by the wayside when one flight you've checked twice has gone up by £50 (talking generally, not meaning you blindman!).

Just to add a bit fuel though to the conspiracists fire, nothing I said relates to Ryanair. They use different software (which is probably why their website is down to often!) and technology which is not transparent to anyone outside of Ryanair. So you never know, M O'L could well have instructed the website to increase the price by £10 everytime you look

blindman

Moonchild You have a PM

~Loz~

Been reading through the replies and whatever the reason is for the price fluctuations i still think it is strange!!

Anyway i have now booked for the weekend after i wanted and saved £80, only did the search once this time, so not sure of the price fluctuations today! haha

I have read reviews for Ryanair and they are varied as to how good/bad they are.

Any tips for a Ryanair virgin?:p

Nordictat2

Yeah,..don't fly with them LOL *joking*

~Loz~

Nordictat2 wrote: »

Yeah,..don't fly with them LOL *joking*

Yeah that was actually what alot of the reviews said!! :rotfl:

I'm a sucker for a bargain and compared to other operators Ryanair had the best price!

I didn't read of any deaths so that sold me!

commit1

Tell you what annoys me about Ryanair: They quote a reasonable fare for the return flight, then charge you £10 extra to pay (by debit card), another £10 to check in on line (obviously you can't fly if you don't check in) and an extra £20 to put a bag of only 15 Kg in the hold. I booked a return trip recently for a 14 day holiday for £74.93, but it cost me an additional £40 for unavoidable add-ons. i.e. not much less the half as much again!
It's not dishonest, but I just don't like the way they suck you in, then hit you with compulsory extra cost. Unfortunately Ryanair is the only way I can get a direct flight to where I want to go!

melb

oh dear! prepare for the onslaught.......