Eddie98

I’m sure this has happened before to most but I just want to ask again.
Yesterday I went to book a flight (for granddaughter) from ATL-DTW without me signing in, I got a price.
Then decide to just book it under my SM so I log in and what do you know, the price jumps up in price. It says “there is a high demand for this flight” even though the price was only $10 more but still.
Then I decide to log off and book it with my wife’s SM account and the price did not go up at all.
What’s up with this? My wife has no status and I’m a PM. Is Delta looking at me and increasing the price since I have status?

rylan

With all of the basically free data available on pax travel behaviors and spend patterns, it wouldn't be surprising to see variable pricing.

jdrtravel

Is that legal?

Saj8986

PDX/MSP March 16-18 prices are identical signed in or not. I also did the same for a trip to GEG.......same price.

Could be a hiccup?

flyerwma

Couldn't this just be a case of flickering inventory? Would be helpful to know what inventory buckets you were being shown at each booking.

KDCAflyer

Always double check prices on DL with Kayak or another site.

xliioper

Whether or not legal, it would almost certainly open up the airlines to massive tort liabilities which is why I very much doubt there is intentional design in these issues. Also, how would they silence the programmers who would necessarily be involved with such shenanigans? The legacies also distribute fare information/availability through multiple GDS systems which means it would be largely trivial to detect any such price manipulation if it was being done on a widespread basis. Without further details from OP (times/dates of flights, number of pax, screenshots, fare classes, etc.) there's not much to go on here. Did OP actually get to purchase page in first instance, or just the price quotes? Did OP check on OTA's such as Expedia and Priceline?

Eddie98

I was able to reproduce it
see attachments.

hi55us

Might this be a glitch because of Basic Economy? Really odd....

xliioper

While both "E" fares, they are actually coming for two different fare buckets. The lower $196 price is an XEUSA0BA outgoing with an VEVSA0BA return. The higher $206 price is an XEUSA0BA fare for both flights. The question is, is there really V bucket availability for that return flight to get the lower VEVSA0BA fare and can you purchase at the price.

The Situation

Odd yes, and it does look really bad, but I concur that there is no way this is intentional. There is too much legal and reputational risk to engage something like this intentionally. I would write into DL and include the screenshots and explain the situation since you were able to reproduce the result a second time. Funny thing is that most of my friends think DL charges me less because I am a medallion.

Dieuwer

The Delta website executes software that is programmed by humans. Intentional or not, a human made this possible.

xliioper

So, as an experiment, I went ahead and successfully purchased the $196 fare with the V fare on the return trip. I did see the price change when searching while already logged in, just like OP. However, I was able to purchase the $196 ticket with my FF number by logging in after the search (rather than before). Definitely odd behavior. But if I was being targeted, why wouldn't it give the higher X fare as soon as I logged in (prior to purchase)? Certainly the website knew who I was at that point.

xliioper

So, after some more experiments, it looks like it doesn't want to pair two E fares with different underlying classes. I can pair two E's with an underlying V, and two E's with an underlying X. But when I try to pair an E with an underlying X with an E with an underlying V, it will bump them both up to the E with underlying X fare when logged in. This is repeatable on multiple dates.

tvnwz

Cookies. And they have been doing it for some time. It is intentional and legal.