Originally Posted by Rebelyell
Globaliser,
My guess is that you don't use Travelocity very much to check fares. In the past, in almost every case a calendar would show up showing that the fare is sold out. This is a new problem.
Currently, as soon as you click on the low fare you are told they aren't available -- no calendar.
No, it's pretty much my first stop for checking fares. I hadn't noticed a new problem and I still can't get it to reproduce on any of the routes I'm interested in, so I've obviously misunderstood the question - sorry.
Originally Posted by whiteknuckles
Travelocity is almost worthless. I don't like the way they drag you in with what appears to be a very low fare and then after you've done all the clicking and clacking on your keyboard, you find out the final price with taxes is virtually double what you started with. I don't like the way their calendar shows dates as available at a particular fare, then when you click on it, you find out it's no longer available. Does this update their website? No. You can come back 24 hours later and still find exactly the same date displayed as available until you click on it again.
Aren't there two different things at work here? The first is that the fare shown is the net fare before taxes etc. It's inevitable that if you start off with a low fare, the taxes are going to be a significant proportion of the fare. But taxes usually can't be accurately calculated until you've built an itinerary, so if you start off with a fare search you could only get an estimate.]
The second is that Sabre (which drives Travelocity) isn't directly connected to all airlines, so in the calendar display they're probably using historical stored availability, which is dependent on what the airline feeds Sabre on the periodic updates. When you try to book it, Sabre tries to get a confirmation from the airline, which may refuse to confirm the reservation if they've sold out in that class since the last historical availability update.
You'd probably get exactly the same problems if you went into a Sabre travel agency and tried to book a ticket using the same fare-driven method.