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It is indeed a strange world, ticket pricing.
I fly 6 times a year to Amsterdam from Louisville. Live on a budget, so look for deals.
I have driven to Toronto, but the parking and two hotel nights make it not cheaper. I always go for 5 weeks, so parking gets expensive. Even not using the airport parking but using a motel or private parking.
Using Louisville, my neighbor bring and pick me up for 40 bucks.
As for tickets, beware of many third party sites like cheapoair.... I use expedia, never a problem. But I book first the oversee flight, mostly from Boston or Newark, prices are around 300 up to 380 dollar. Than I finf a flight from Louisville to the airport where the trans Atlantic leaves. As long as there are nu delays....
Last November though I found a ticket from Louisville to Amsterdam for 508 dollar, round trip. Bought it immediately . This time I fly with WOW air. Not a bad airline.
Some garduates of Stanford's operations research program developed sophisicated software for ticket pricing, minute by minute, based on supply of and demand for seats, using his historical data that was continually updated to reflect the effect of current demand trends on past averages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jkgourmet
In the case of a airline tickets, the supply changes every minute. Demand is more static - which is why airlines infrequently add or delete a route.
The airport fees make a difference as well. But not as much as supply and demand.
I believe this is what is referred to as "Dynamic Pricing", and it does tend to drive one crazy when trying to plan and budget travel. Prices can literally change by the minute in some instances, combine this with trying to transfer or redeem credit card points/ frequent flyer miles, etc. that may only be good applied to full fare and/or peak pricing (no combining discounts...) and it becomes quite the chess game.
Imagine a department store employing real time dynamic pricing wherein the price of an item may change from the time you take it off the shelf and put it in your cart to the time you reach the checkout...
For further reading, below is the link to the Wikipedia page explaining Dynamic Pricing...
I fly 6 times a year to Amsterdam from Louisville. Live on a budget, so look for deals. I have driven to Toronto, but the parking and two hotel nights make it not cheaper.
But I book first the oversee flight, mostly from Boston or Newark, prices are around 300 up to 380 dollar. Than I find a flight from Louisville to the airport where the trans Atlantic leaves. As long as there are no delays....
Yes, my wife goes back home to Panama annually on vacation. Most times I end up getting a ticket on Spirit either from Dallas or Houston, and just drive her to one of those airports, even though they are several hours away. I save several hundred dollars on the airfare since it is so expensive to fly from San Antonio.
While I could make separate reservations (one for the flight from wherever to Panama, and one from San Antonio to the departure point to Panama), she always travels "heavy" with many bags. So any savings I could achieve with a "split" reservation are eaten up with double baggage fees. I have however bought her a one way ticket back to San Antonio from the airport she returns to (e.g. Houston to San Antonio). The danger in that however is if the Spirit return flight is delayed, and she misses the flight to San Antonio, we are just SOL. That happened to us once when her Spirit flight from Panama to Fort Lauderdale was delayed causing her to miss her Spirit flight from Fort Lauderdale to Dallas. So now when I purchase the one way return flight I allow her at least a 4 hour layover between the Spirit flight arrival, and the departure of the return flight to San Antonio. Sometimes even that would not be enough time though.
LOL. This free market and supply demand are way overrated.
If you want to book for Xmas during the spring, its still priced higher. Unless they are adding 10 or more flights to meet the demand.
When people need it they raise the price, when they don't need it, they are still now lowest.
What you are describing, especially the last sentence, is supply and demand. Fly in February or October and you will find much cheaper tickets than flying over a holiday.
I am flying to San Jose, Costa Rica in May, LAX-PTY-SJO-PTY-LAX (with a 1hr 15 min layover in PTY) was half the price of the exact same date/time/flight# of LAX-PTY-LAX, go figure.
To me, the worst is finding a good fare that won't book. Others have said it's due to cached fares that are out of date, but I doubt that, especially since I've found this on airline websites themselves. I think it's bait and switch.
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) and it becomes quite the chess game.
