Fare Play: Airfare Pricing Tip
As author of the "What's the Deal?" column, I spend countless hours online researching airfares. But I encountered a new-for-me pricing quirk this weekend. Perhaps sharing the experience will help someone save a buck or two.
I needed four round-trip tickets from New York to St. Louis so the relatives could get to my daughter's commencement in mid May. I'd been tracking the fares for weeks, and decided to buy after it became clear prices were creeping up.
American Airlines out of LaGuardia afforded the best nonstop option, so I went to its Web site and plugged in a request for four tickets. The price came up at $309.70 each -- not a great fare, but good enough. About 45 minutes later, after getting in touch with various family members, I decided to pull the trigger. But now the price had gone up to $359.70 a ticket. I've warned readers for years that this sort of price change can happen within moments, but I was still peeved. I then got the idea of plugging each ticket into the system individually. And what do you know? I got the first three tickets for $309.70 each, and only the fourth was $359.70.
Apparently, putting in the four as a group kicked all to the higher price. Perhaps the computer program isn't designed to break out different price points when you request a group of tickets, so it automatically defaults to the higher fare. Whatever the cause, valuable lesson learned. Next time you need more than one ticket at a time, price them individually to make sure you're getting the best fare.
By Carol Sottili |
March 9, 2009; 11:31 AM ET
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Airline Industry
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Carol Sottili
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View or post comments
Posted by: andimal | March 9, 2009 12:59 PM
Sorry, but your theory doesn't seem to hold up. I just checked it out on Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity, requesting multiple seats on those LGA-STL American flights. All quoted me a price of $403 per person (that includes booking fees). Then I went to www.aa.com and asked for just one seat - price quote was $291 (less than what I paid). But when I asked www.aa.com for four seats, it quoted me $396 (same as third-party booking sites, minus the fees). Any other ideas?
Posted by: sottilic | March 9, 2009 1:57 PM
Carol -- so much for the airlines' promise of "best fare guaranteed." I hope someone from American Airlines will respond to you formally about this, and I hope American and other airlines will make sure that their software is able to handle this little quirk.
Thanks for an interesting bit of news for us frequent travellers that aren't always subsidized by company expense accounts.
Rick
Posted by: rpike | March 11, 2009 2:56 PM
Delta has the same problem
4 people I know are heading to cozumel at the end of sept. Price for 1-3 tickets is just under $450 but when you try to buy 4 together, the price jumps to over 560 or something like that.
Maybe a rep from Delta can take the lead from the above AA rep and address this..QUICKLY!
Posted by: rdy4all2000 | March 12, 2009 10:47 AM
Im sorry..I mean, i hope a rep from Delta will follow the lead of the AA rep IF they contact you.
BTW..Delta hasn't responded to inquiries.
Posted by: rdy4all2000 | March 12, 2009 10:49 AM
Here's a good article if you are going to Vegas.
"How to get a room comped in Vegas"
http://vacation-in-vegas.com/?p=164
Posted by: bighappy | March 14, 2009 6:33 PM
AA allows you to hold the reservation for 24 hours (and the price) - see this blog post describing "The Stealth Hold":
Posted by: tourist3 | March 15, 2009 1:08 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
What almost certainly happened what there they only had three tickets left in that fare class before you had to jump up to the next (more expensive) one. In this case, shopping at the airline's website was not beneficial, as there are plenty of reseller sites that are able to manage booking a group in two different fare classes (to get you that cheaper rate for the first three tickets).