Tried to buy one of my kids a ticket from Laguardia to West Palm on AA over Christmas. Looked on the computer on a Thursday and the price was $315. Go to buy next morning and it now goes to $348. Call Midway and get a better fare, so I buy it. Just for kicks, I follow the original flights to monitor pricing. By Saturday morning the price goes back to $280. By that night its down to $228. Thus, in less than 48 hours the price for the same ticket swings over a hundred bucks (a third of the value). I'm not naive about this sort of thing, but that's a little extreme. We know the pricing software is pretty fast, but to turn the simple task of buying a ticket into a shooting gallery (hope you hit the price as it flies by!) is starting to push the envelope to the extreme. The kid's an AA platinum, and she ends up on another (albeit affiliated) carrier, while some walk-up who gets lucky and calls at the right moment takes the seat. Gimme a break.