Airline Ticket Dynamic pricing

Much has happened in the airline industry during the last decades. In the past, most airline passengers went to the airline booking office or to a travel agent to get their airline tickets.

Today, more and more people book the airline tickets themselves over the Internet. The number of airline sales agents has been reduced dramatically, saving a lot of money for the airlines.

Dynamic ticket prices

The price that you as an airline passenger see when you brows the airline's booking pages are so called dynamic prices. What it mean is that the prices are subjected to constant changes.

The price is different at different times.

Some airlines change the prize of the on line tickets many times every day, sometimes more than ten time times per day.

There are many factors that can affect the price of an airline ticket.

The major purpose of the dynamic booking system is of course to let the airline earn as much money as possible for every seat aboard the aircraft.

Another reason behind the on line booking system is of course to let you as an airline passenger book the ticket yourself. In this way there will be no travel agent in between you and the airline.

Travel agents normally charge the airline a commission fee for every booking. Thus as you do the job for the travel agent, you are saving money for the airline.

But beware! Some airlines are deceptive in their on line booking procedures.

They stat by presenting you a lower price at the beginning of the booking sequence.

As you proceed further in the booking, extra charges are being added to the initial price.

Baggage fees, seating request fees, insurances, booking fees, credit card fees are just some examples of extra charges that airlines may want you to pay. In this way, the final price can be much higher than what you anticipated from the start.

As you have made the flight reservation, given your name and address, the airline knows that you will most likely not back out of the booking at this late stage in the process, therefore they chose to present the real price for the ticket at the end of rather than in the beginning of the booking procedure. The airlines often claim that this is to let you choose the services you require, not charging you for things you don't want. Not entirely true.

The price can be lower for some passengers

If you are a group of people and you want to book and fly on the same flight, you may be charged differently.

Why does the price vary over time?

First of all, the airline has got different ticket or price categories aboard the aircraft.

Some cheaper tickets may be sold first. Closer to time of departure, the airline alter the price according to the number of seats being sold so far.

If you want to be able to change the booking at a later date, the ticket price is of course higher. This is because the airline reserves some seats aboard each flight for passengers that are willing to pay more for the possibility to get a seat on a flight in the near future.

As the departure date is coming closer, the airline's computer calculate the number of empty seats aboard the flight. If few seat have been sold, the price goes down a bit. However, if there are only a few seats left aboard the plane, the price goes up.

Tickets for flights departing at times when many people wish to fly is also naturally more expensive than tickets on flights on times when few people want to fly.

The airline may have planned to operate a bigger aircraft for a specific flight, thus offering many seats aboard the flight. As the departure date comes nearer, the airline may change to another type of aircraft if only few tickets has been sold. Suddenly much fewer seats are available on the flight, hence the ticket price goes up.

Cookies and IP addresses

One of the most cunning way that an airline use to charge your more is to let your own computer give you away. Say that you are interested to fly on a specific date. You check the airline's booking page for price and availability. Later you check the price again, but now it has gone up!

You check it again and it has gone up even more! You hurry to book and buy the ticket.

What has happened? Well, every time you visit the airlines booking page, the Internet site leaves a Cookie in the web browser on your Computer. As you revisit the airline's booking page, the Computer gives you away. The airline now know that you have been visiting their page before.

Sensing an interest from your side, they rise the price, pressing you to book.

To counteract this you can remove the Cookies from your Web browser by emptying the Cache memory. If your Internet provider assign Dynamic IP addresses, you may also log off your Internet connection and log on again. In this way you will show a different IP address that the airline's Computer does not recognize.