SFO-IAD March 18th back on the 26th. $1,059 + taxes and fees...for coach.

I know I've been avoiding the East Coast with all the storms this winter but really am I missing something here? Are they giving away free gold in DC? Or is it all the lobbyist making their way there to debate health care reform? Or is it the Spring break thing? Or is it the pent up demand? Or perhaps one of those agencies I sometimes work with just messing with my mind?

On the weekend I started putting together a trip and looked at the fares at around $500. My normal budget is around $350 so I thought I'd wait and see. Then I checked a day later and they were up around $600. No problem, I have a $600 e-certificate from an earlier botched flight segment I thought. So I figured that if they went up a bit, no worries. So then today in the morning they were at around $780 and I just checked a minute ago and the least expensive coach nonrefundable ticket was $1059 before taxes and fees. More along the lines of $1300 if I wanted to book a better time.

Then it hit me. I must have left the first class box "checked" in my profile.

Wrong! It was coach...nonrefundable...

I've always thought that maybe one of the cookies that gets stuffed into my computer's cookie jar is an evil cookie that says OK he's looking now let's get him to jump sooner by conditioning him to take the first flight he sees. I know that inventory allocation is dynamic but is it possibly also "targeted"?

Then again maybe those guys over at the _ _ _ really are playing around with me. Guess I should have bought the beer last visit.

Good thing I have lots of miles to redeem.