Hello all,

I hope this is the right place to post the following rant. Apologies if this is a matter that has been discussed here in the past or whether it's an issue which has been widely pursued or even resolved with some satisfaction in other media forums. I did conduct a quick search of these forums and did not come across a thread that raises the issue of ticket price fluctuations in quite the same way.


We've all looked for airline tickets and seen their price fluctuate over time based on seat supply and demand, competitive pressure among carriers and possibly on other criteria known to the airlines but unknown, certainly to me, and probably to the public at large.
Are we too naive in our assumption that ticket price differentials over the short term are attributable solely to the laws of supply and demand? More particularly, I'd like to know why ticket prices sometimes fluctuate – not merely increase, but actually go up and down – not only on a daily but on an hourly basis.

During the past 2 months I've booked two tickets (by coincidence, both on airlines that are members of the Star Alliance) only to see their price rise following my purchase. In the first instance I monitored a Brussels Airlines fare from TLV to BRU and saw it fluctuate modestly somewhat over the course of a week. When I finalised my travel plans the ticket price was some tens of dollars more expensive than the price quoted on the airline's website the previous day and I assumed that prices had begun to rise as we were getting closer to departure day and as seat availability was disappearing. Imagine my chagrin when the day after I had purchased the ticket I saw that the price had dropped by tens of dollars to a price I had originally seen 2 weeks previous.

In the second instance, over the course of 4-5 days, I monitored a TLV-LAX route on the Lufthansa webpage while putting together future travel plans. The ticket price for the flight combination I investigated stayed constant up until the very morning my travel plans became finalised. Positing that the over-$110 increase in ticket price was the result of decreasing seat availability I went ahead and made my purchase. Two-three hours later I noticed that the ticket price had dropped to the price I had originally seen posted on the Lufthansa website over the previous 4-5 days! Moreover, it stayed at that lower price for the next few days and even dropped a few dollars after that!!

What could account for a price rise that lasts mere hours? Did a significantly large group of people book and then cancel reservations on that particular flight combination? If lower-priced ticket inventory (i.e. lower-priced ticket classes) suddenly became in short supply why did this lower-priced inventory just as suddenly reappear only hours after my purchase of higher-priced inventory and continued to be sold many days later? Perhaps Lufthansa suddenly had to factor in much higher fuel costs for a number of hours before recalculating these costs and again lowering ticket prices?

To the heart of the issue: is it possible that my repeated entering and exiting of the Lufthansa website and my mere investigation of a particular Lufthansa route to see how arrival times etc. aligned with other ongoing flights on other carriers was enough to trigger the airline's system to register a spike in booking velocity (i.e. interest in that flight) and consequently to raise prices for that particular ticket combination? Is mere interest in a specific flight or flight combination – as opposed to a firm booking – sufficient to initiate a price rise? Can a prospective passenger unwittingly manipulate an airline's dynamic pricing settings to his/her detriment and inadvertently raise the price of a flight ticket just by checking availability and price on an airline's webpage?

After all, many airlines (including Lufthansa) enable technical features on their website that keep tabs of a route and travel date request typed into their system from a particular computer. For example, each time I entered the Lufthansa website their system remembered that I had been looking up a TLV-LAX route so I did not need to re-enter that info into the computer.
In the same vein, it is not inconceivable that airline booking systems keep tab of repeated interest – and not just firm reservations – and that this may be enough to trigger price hikes.

The question then becomes; why did the price go down after I had made a firm purchase? Are some price hikes 'personalised'? Are they tailored to the interests and concerns over availability of particular individuals entering airline sites from specific computers regardless of what overall booking velocity and seating availability on that flight are in reality? Do airlines use browser cookies and similar methods to raise prices based on the number of times a particular individual has entered their site to check prices?

Obviously, I've suddenly found an interest in airline pricing policy because I'm miffed at purchasing a ticket precisely within an extremely narrow window of a few hours during which the ticket combo I was interested in was priced higher than it had been during the previous 4-5 days and (at time of writing) higher than it would be advertised during the following week. However, though there is a readily ridiculed air of 'conspiracy' around this issue perhaps there's also a measure of cynicism and perhaps illegality surrounding such practices……if indeed there is some basis in fact regarding the questions raised above. Surely these matters are worthy of further investigation for the benefit of a broader section of flyers. Have these 'personalisation of price hike' issues been investigated in the past? If so where can such findings be obtained? Is it within a passenger's rights to ask to see an airline's price chart for their fare over the days prior to and following their purchase of this fare? What precise criteria and methodology do airlines use in order to construct their dynamic pricing packages?

I have contacted Lufthansa with a request that they clarify this matter – along with a hopeful request that they refund the difference between ticket prices. I have yet to hear from them, though admittedly my correspondence began just before the Christmas holiday period.

Any input from airline insiders, people with similar experiences, etc. appreciated.