uxb

Is it just me, or is AA.com's dynamic pricing becoming increasingly ridiculous? I recently ran a search for a flight home from Toronto on 11 Sept. On Friday, the fare was ~US$107,- (matching AC), but I failed to hold it. Earlier today, I go to search for the same fare on Google Flights, and see that the price had jumped to ~US$135,- in the morning and ~US$152,- by noon. Google Flights pulls the information from americanairlines.ca since the flight originated in Canada. I figured that they were removing fare codes, and adjusting for the strengthening CAD. However, I decided to search on Kayak to see if they were getting the same thing. Nope. The same fare was US$143,- when I clicked through the link on Kayak, and US$180,- when I tried to book it directly on AA.com. I put the Kayak price on hold and went about my day. Just now, I went back to check pricing, americanairlines.ca via Google Flights was showing ~CA$173 (~US$135,49), Kayak was showing US$152,- and AA.com was showing US$123,99. This has got to be the least transparent AA has been in the 15 years I've been flying them.

P.S. Yes, I held the $123,99 fare to see what tomorrow brings.

jiangning

As someone who frequently holds and then monitors fare, I would say the frequency of changing prices is much higher than I thought. Sometimes fare exists in the morning, disappears in the evening, and comes back a day later.
However, there are some logic and patterns that you can observe so usually I'm not super nervous if something I have just seen disappears.

3Cforme

Are these fare changes - as in a change in price for the same fare rule/or a new fare filed - or are they reflecting fare bucket availability? The former is limited to x times per day by the GDS. Maybe six? Fare bucket availability changes in real time. Somebody buys the last seat on any segment that your search had used and you're pushed into a more costly fare.

Even less significant is a comparison across sites in different currencies. That's not a price change at all.

uxb

I wouldn't normally factor in currency conversion, but you have multiple prices across multiple versions of AA's sites and third party sites. I understand price changes when fare bucket availability dries up, but this is not that.

uxb

I'm pretty sure cookies play a role in this, but I don't know why there should be a great disparity in price amongst all sites supposedly drawing on the same pool of seats.

abk

When I see this I either change browsers or go to private browsing and have better luck finding the original low fare.