Hidden Fares on NWA.com – Add your Insight Here
More maddening behavior on nwa.com.
The devils / gremlins of Northwest are multiplying.
I don’t why this has not come up more often, but I have noticed that since Northwest put in their new-Orbitz powered flight search engine there are a lot of cases where flight searches will lie to you about the lowest available fare. This is especially true when there are sale fares that are restricted to a small percentage of the universe of possible itineraries to get to your destination. Here is an example that illustrates why it is easy to be fooled about the lowest available fare on your travel dates:
Flexible dates pulls up this fare for Jan. 20-22; IAD to LAS RT (this is just an example for illustration):
$195.30 Avg Total Price/Person
Northwest Airlines 1407
Sat, Jan 20
12:35pm Depart Washington (IAD)
2:11pm Arrive Detroit (DTW)
Northwest Airlines 293
Sat, Jan 20
5:00pm Depart Detroit (DTW)
5:55pm Arrive Memphis (MEM)
Northwest Airlines 525
Sat, Jan 20
7:10pm Depart Memphis (MEM)
8:32pm Arrive Las Vegas (LAS)
Northwest Airlines 6574
operated by Continental Airlines 396
Mon, Jan 22
9:45am Depart Las Vegas (LAS)
2:46pm Arrive Houston (IAH)
Northwest Airlines 1628
Mon, Jan 22
4:15pm Depart Houston (IAH)
8:07pm Arrive Detroit (DTW)
Northwest Airlines 1400
Mon, Jan 22
9:05pm Depart Detroit (DTW)
10:28pm Arrive Washington (IAD)
Searching by lowest fare for these specific dates does not return this option and returns a lowest fare about $280+.
Searching by price / schedule does not provide a choice exactly the same and returns a lowest available fare of $289 (and this does not just happen when itineraries involve codeshare flights operated by another airline, I have seen the same thing happen when that is not the case).
Searching by schedule does not provide an opportunity to duplicate the exact same itinerary, and it is too laborious to check every other single option for fare as it requires you to start over each time you want to check the price for different flights. It does provide options for return flights that involve Continental or Delta metal, just not the same ones that give the lowest fare.
Even a search by price where you specify the exact same times for departure that you now know should return a lower fare fails to do so (it does yield a low fare of $242 with still different itineraries than came up with any of the previous search methods).
And no, it is not just because of dynamic pricing – one can go back to the search by flexible dates and pull up the lower fare again.
No, the flexible dates method is not always the one with the lowest fares showing – sometimes the opposite is true – one gets a lower fare with the date-specific search.
I have noticed similar problems with Award Travel – it is very difficult to get all of the posslble Standard (aka Perksaver) itineraries to display, and in many, many cases inaccurate information is returned about the availability of award flights on the dates of travel that you select. I have found it more difficult and more time-consuming to try to force out what’s really available than was the case with the previous flight search engine Northwest used.