groenroos

First time using Aegean, and I'm trying to price a HEL-ATH in Business for mid-August.

I thought I found a decent deal with ~503 EUR per person return; I went to book it, and it went up to 605 EUR pp. After filling in my details, it changed again to 725 EUR pp. And finally, when I (reluctantly) tried to pay for it, I assume the flight prices must've increased enough to cause an integer overflow or something, as it showed an error and then spat me back to the front page.

Is this sort of thing normal for Aegean?

djjaguar64

Cookies? Try another computer or try your phone app. Or try incognito.

giorginho

I checked out those mid-August Z fares (as well as mid-September...) and was able to go all the way to the payment page without seeing changes in price, which, for business class fares, would be a big surprize.

A known issue for some time now with Aegean is that economy flex and even comfort flex tickets at the search appear to be even cheaper than light tickets (this issue is more apparent when prices are hight, usually above 250 euros one-way, which was obviously your case as well). The "normal" difference between light and comfort flex is based on distance and for the direct HEL-ATH flight it's 16 euros between light and flex and a whopping 63 euros between light and comfort flex!

One thing that could explain one price increase of the two though, is if you've tried that "dummy booking" multiple times, so that you yourself "reserved" all available tickets of a specific fare and the system then "jumped" to the next one. If no booking gets completed, the cheaper fare should become available again after perhaps 30 minutes or so (maybe a bit longer).

OR.... I don't know your exact dates, but if you search tickets for a single person you always get the cheapest price, if you search for more passengers and lets say Aegean has 1 seat at the Z fare only, then you get the price for the next fare (which is 100 EUR more in this case) for BOTH passengers. This is what is happening for example on the August 9th flight HEL-ATH, there's one seat at 245 euros but if you select 2 passengers it indeed jumps to 605 pp and if you already went all the way to the payment details page and didn't cancel/change the booking process the proper way, then you reserved 2 seats in Aegean's system and your next search caused also the return leg to jump to the D fare, which does in fact take the total cost pp up to 705 euros. So either you chose dates with only 1 seat per fare available or the above happened, or something similar, or it could be just cookies/cache, on any case, just try again 1 hour later, use incognito as djjaguar64 suggested and don't go further than the search results page. If prices jump for 2 people, book them separately (but know that the 2nd will likely pay 100 euros more if no more seats are available at the Z fare).

groenroos

Waited 16 hours and the prices returned to the original 503 EUR pp, and I was able to book it with the same laptop without further problems or increases!

Yesterday, my partner and I were both simultaneously pricing the same trip both direct on Aegean and with various price comparison / travel agent sites - perhaps that seeming sudden rush of interest caught the attention of the algorithm, and it jacked up the prices?

In any case, it's all booked now! Thanks to both of you for your help!

Xandrios

When you go beyond the search page (and you select a flight, select seats and such) then the fare is temporarily removed from available inventory. It depends a little bit on what websites were used, but there definitely are OTA's that will do this. That could very well explain the price jump.

nk15

Yes, the Aegean site does that too, and if these are the last available tickets in that fare class, any subsequent search bumps you up to the next fare class...It takes maybe like 1-2 hours to be released back, or something like that...