FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Fare difference due to OTA time zone?
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Old Jul 2, 2019 | 9:01 pm
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Dave Noble
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Originally Posted by stiwi
I was planning to book business class tickets for our family travelling back to UAE, so I checked the fares 2-3 days ago on EK website departing from WAW. Today I wanted to go ahead and book them, the price was unchanged apart from slight currency fluctuations. While booking I was distracted by a phone call. The session has expired so I had to start again and to my surprise the prices went up on all days as I checked flexible calendar as well. So I started checking some others websites which I sometimes book through and it was confirmed the price went up. I then went to Expedia to give it one more check and the price was the same as before EK price increase! Therefore I booked it immediately saving almost $700.

It seems EK was adjusting its fares at around 01:00 CEST time but the old fares were still available in other time zones like Expedia in US. I guess in a few hours time "US" fares will get adjusted as well. Have you noticed something like this before?
If there is a fare that has to be ticketed by a specific date / or advance purchase requires purchase N days in advance, I have seen this

Since it works purely on a calendar day, time zone impacts availability

e.g. for today if a fare has to be ticketed by 3rd July , it will have to be purchased within 9 hours in Auckland, but there is still 31 hours left to purchase in Honolulu

Country jumping is a way of dealing with missing it in a local country
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