Apparantely American Airlines sold fewer tickets than expected. Around 1am on Saturday morning, seats for $130 opened up at noon on Saturday and on Sunday at 7:10am. I switched my tickets online, no change fee, no fare difference.

The revenue management system, realizing that it sold fewer tickets than anticipated LOWERED the ticket price on at least two routes. That’s exactly what’s supposed to happen.

As such, I cannot complain when the RMS RAISES prices as appropriate. But to call it bait and switch is simply wrong.

When I called Kayak, I was told this was a consolidator rate and that I should try again at off hours. The same booking appeared several times, and, on the third try I was able to book four nights for a price that was lower than advertised because of the improvement in the exchange rate against the Euro. But, that has been the only positive experience I have had dealing with the problem.

You make a fair point about ticketmaster. But the theatres don’t use revenue management systems. Ticket prices don’t fluctuate (at least not via authorized vendors) regardless of the number sold. A specific seat, for a specific performace will cost a constant amount, regardless of whether its the first or the last seat sold. Therefore holding a ticket, for 2 minutes, isn’t a big deal because the price won’t go up.

But there is a flip side. once you actually place a reservation on hold with a travel provider, the price might be guaranteed for several days which isn’t bad.

@Joe. Try using the new enhanced features with AA.com. It takes alot of the mystery out of ticket purchasing. Its makes it more like southwest. I’d love to have your opinion on if you see it as less deceptive pricing?

I travel frequently for work and I often put a reservation on hold on aa.com and then pay for it the next day when my job is confirmed. On more than one occasion I have had the fare actually decrease when I went back to pay for it. It’s rare, but it does happen.

So there you go, now you’ve heard of a fare going down “during the reservation process”.

I’m certainly not one to defend the airline industry. The a la carte fares and mostly non-existent customer service annoy me to no end. It’s no fun to fly anymore. But you still have to be objective if you want to be taken seriously when addressing the problems.

The REAL scam is having a person enter a preferred departure time- that then ALWAYS comes up with the highest fare that day.

So, if you want to leave at 1pm, put in 6am as departure time, if you want to leave at 6pm – put noon in as the time – those are diametrically opposed times in the travel business.

American, Delta and Expedia play this game. Try it next time. If you put in a departure time that it not the time you want, then the time you want will display the lowest fare because the boooking engine thinks that you do not want the time, The airlines KNOW that if you have to leave at 6a then you will pay $20 each way more to get your preferred departure time. Try it some time – it is astonishing how often you can game the booking engine. They assume that people will be honest, just like they are honest about what your mothers maiden name is on the security questions. I give them a number when they ask that – the computer just matches the responses, its not like it can tell its not a name!

Anyway, yet another way you get parted from a few extra dollars.

That and before you start a search for a holiday ticket- DELETE your cookies – the airlines track your reservations activity and sell you higher priced fares every time you check the same route and days. Proof right here:

17 Nov 08 I put in travel from BDL-ORD, leaving 11/26 returning 11/28. The return fare on one lfight was $59 late Fri evening [few folks want to travel Fri evening of Thanksgiving weekendt].

I then decided to see if I could get a decent fare Sat morning to spend an extra night with family. Nope – the fares on Sat were too high.

I went BACK to the SAME search times and dates, and the $59 fare went to $171.

So – I went to my cache and deleted my cookies. I then re-entered the home page and went back to 11/26 – 11/28. What did I get? The $59 fare had returned for the Sat departure. This was in less than 5 minutes. They simply cannot tell me that the fares had come back down in that 5 min since the time outs for others to select and buy their tickets are 15-20 min or so.

So, you need to work hard to get the best fare online, it is not as easy as simply entering times and dates. sometimes you even need to select a satellite airport.

With airline tickets, the taxes charged are not just the usual sales tax, and no one really has any clue what the taxes are (emphasis on the plurality of that word). Taxes, not tax. If an airline ticket is quoted as $100.00, the taxes may be $100-500, or more. Indeed, the taxes differ for each leg of the flight, and depend partially on which airports are used.

Hence, it is entirely fair to “single out airlines as if they are doing something unusual,” because they are doing something unusual. Add to all this the issue of fuel (& other) surcharges, and the pricing system of airline tickets can no longer be compared to that of other businesses at all.

It’s ironic that you mention Ticketmaster. Have you ever used them before? When you window-shop for a ticket, the site actually reserves a seat and price for you and as long as you pay for your ticket in the time allotted, you will get the seat offered at the price quoted. Ticketmaster will never quote you a price, and then yank it out from under you like the airlines do.

Wish the airlines could learn a few things from Ticketmaster, no?

Great point, hence why I always avoid Ticketmaster as well. If a company isn’t running their business well enough to be honest upfront, they’re not running it well enough to deserve my hard earned cash.

What we fail to appreciate is that many, many people are merely window shopping when they obtain price quotes. That’s probably why there are two separate systems, one fo showing and one for booking. Besides, that’s the limitation of shopping these silly third party sites. If the price changes before Expedia books the ticket, Expedia can’t really do much about it.

Yield management which changes by the second is a fair topic of discussion. In my personal experiences, I’ve only had prices increase during high volume times like Christmas. I have had prices decrease which is always a pleasant surprise, but doesn’t make nearly the same emotional appeal.

Similarly, American business rarely quote prices inclusive of taxes and fees. Used Ticketmaster lately? Why single out airlines as if they are doing something unusual.

My $0.02