As a silver last year, I'd wind up watching the seat maps and debating whether or not I needed to buy up before the 24-hour window (never did, but came really close a few times). I can say from experience that it's definitely dynamic, and on the flights I was watching closely (which tended to be the fuller ones), the price would tend to go up pretty significantly for the same seat as the 24-hour window approached and available inventory went down (this was most obvious on an IAD->SFO nonstop, where you knew that upgrades weren't going to be a lot of help clearing things out).
I've never seen it actually go down (at least not before the 24-hour window, at which point I didn't really care how much things were). Not to say that it won't happen, but IME, it was always cheapest early on when there was a lot of available inventory (and when you've got the least intuition as to whether it would fill up)
Originally Posted by
Maxwell Smart
Wow, really? The cost might actually vary based on aisle/middle/window?! I thought it was just based on flight length, didn't know it was also dynamic based on demand.
Try doing a dummy booking w/o logging in and mousing over the seats. From my experience, you'll see price vary based on:
1. Aisle/window/middle
2. Bulkhead (more), limited recline (less)
3. length of flight
4. available seating -- E+ in non-reconfigured CO planes is substantially more than the same route flown by a sUA plane, since there are only a few rows of true E+.
5. demand (as seats are taken and available inventory decreases, price will go up for the same seat over time)
Possibly other factors, but those are the ones I've noticed over the past few months while booking trips for my family of 4...