Price difference between Google Flights and AA
 

I was booking a business class flight from CUR-MIA-DCA for early December which I was tracking on Google Flights. I checked and Google flights had the price at $621 so I went to aa.com to book it. When I searched for the same flights, the business class ticket came up as $871.89. This was not too surprising as Google probably doesn't update their prices as often as the airlines. For kicks, I went back to Google flights and clicked on the "Book with American" link which took me to aa.com where the price was $622.39! Both searches were for the same flights on the same day in the same cabin with the same number of passengers. Flights booked into I class and was ticketed at the lower price.

After booking the flight, the price on Google flights is now showing $867. Has anyone else seen instances of where the price going directly to aa.com was higher than can be achieved by going through a third party link to aa.com? I assume there was only 1 seat left in the I bucket, but then why didn't that price show when searching on aa.com?

Yea, I've seen instances of this exact same thing here and there when searching using GF and aa.com. No idea why it happens.

Yes, ran into it last month (?) In fact, couldn't even find the flight on aa.com. I'm not sure if it was a placeholder or not (was something like: ALB-ORD-PVR and PVR-ORD-ALB) on 6/3-6/11 in F for like $763. AA didn't show it and the cheapest was like over a thousand. Of course, a few days after booking, AA had the massive schedule change and it's now ALB-ORD-DFW-PVR.

Not sure if they ever actually have an ORD-PVR flight or not (they show another ALB-ORD-PVR in December as well).

But I clicked on the link in Google and it ironically took me to AA site and I booked that way.

$872 fare is a LNN4AQR1 fare which books into R. $623 fare is a GNX8AQI1 fare which books into I (as you noted). The fare basis codes can be found at end of booking process at fare rules link and can be looked up on ExpertFlyer. ExpertFlyer can also tell you what it sees for bucket availability on flights with Flight Availability search.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b718cc9b3d.png
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...5af588dbf6.png

Looks like Google Flights may not be looking at married segment inventory (or perhaps it has stale cached inventory). ITA Matrix gets it correct with one-way search (showing R fare), but Google Flights does not. Generally, airline sites will do a final check for married segment inventory before allowing you to book (I know Delta's site does). They will dutifully pull up any published fare with API interface without checking inventory first. It's only when you checkout where they should do a final inventory check.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...0efc5cca52.png

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...070b30839e.png

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...85bf93925d.png

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...2a588d1460.png

I have had similar experiences booking via the GF interface directly to the airline. I say "the airline" as it has happened both on AA and UA. Specifically booking domestic F flights to Mexico and the Caribbean.
.

I always forget to check that before purchase and I don't see any way to pull up the fare (or FF earnings) after it's booked. I let my EF subscription lapse when I wasn't flying last year, but it might be time to renew.

I was able to purchase the fare and it did get ticketed at the lower price. I know GF does sometimes price fares as separate tickets which may be the case here. I'm just surprise that the AA website allowed it and didn't reprice it at the higher fare.

No, it's not separate tickets/fares. It is a single fare (fare basis code GNX8AQI1) covering the entire route and thus married segment inventory should be used. In the instance above, ExpertFlyer is showing there is zero inventory in the I bucket for married segments. There is I inventory on the standalone flights, but that is only to be used when buying an individual fare on the individual flights. It looks like Google Flights is quoting the single fare based on individual flight inventory instead of married segment inventory which is not what it is supposed to be doing. There are multi-city tricks to get Google Flights/ITA to quote wrong fares using individual bucket inventory, but I haven't seen it happen on one-way searches before (and it seems only Google Flights is doing it). When using the multi-city tricks on Google/ITA to bring up fares for which there is no married inventory on delta.com, it will reject it when you checkout as it will validate married inventory availability before purchase. It appears that aa.com may not do this final validation step.

answer,
somebody put a hold on the flight at the cheaper fare forcing you to shop into a higher fare bucket. Then they canceled the hold releasing the seat back into a cheaper fare bucket. Of course no surprise if the airlines computer did all this on its own to test the water on what sells

Google Flights has stale info (and matrix) from time to time. They seem to have gotten better with phantom inventory vs a couple of years ago, but it definitely still happens.

Also, a lot of these premium fares are dual booking inventory fares, so regardless of whether I,R,P, etc. is the primary booking code, if inventory in lower economy booking codes opens up, the premium fare can often drop (even if the booking code remains the same).

Just happened to me today on a client booking...Premium Economy price dropped $50 one-way from time reservation was made to ticketing (overnight). Booking inventory "P" didn't change.

Ahhh, that's a good point.

The timing of this would be exceptionally unlikely. I was able to exactly recreate OP's fare quote and scenario above on Google Flights. I have no idea what date or flights OP was looking at. I just searched some dates and looked for flights with the $872 R fare on aa.com and they did some digging on ExpertFlyer and quotes on both Google Flights and ITA Matrix in addition to aa.com. Both aa.com and ITA Matrix are correctly using married segment inventory for fare availability and are quoting an R fare based on the fact that there is no married segment inventory in the I bucket. This makes it far less likely that it is some sort of caching issue on Google Flights (which would largely be unpredictable), and more likely the case that Google Flights is simply incorrectly looking at individual flight bucket availability when quoting the fare for the combined flights and quoting the incorrect fare. Fortunately for OP, aa.com does not seem to actually validate the married segment inventory availability from the Google Flights quote and went ahead and booked the I fare.

I wonder whether you're perhaps seeing country-specific pricing on a one way ticket.

This happened to me a few years ago -- we were taking a trip to YUL and making arrangements for flights back to the U.S. I noticed the price was significantly cheaper booking a Biz class flight by using the google flights link to get to the pricing page at AA.com, as opposed to searching on AA.com directly. I had no problem booking the flight but had to call in later to make a change, and the agent became very flustered, saying something like she couldn't work with a Canadian issued ticket. She wanted to charge me several hundred dollars more -- I don't remember all the details, but she made it clear she thought we had gotten some sort of Canadian discount. :)

No. What you are describing is likely due to the fact that US/Canada fares are generally priced at the same dollar amount in both directions. When you book a roundtrip ex-US, both outbound and return fares will be priced in US dollars. When you book as separate one-way's, the flight ex-US will be in US dollars, but the return will be priced in Canadian dollars and is cheaper due to the exchange rate. This assumes that there aren't cheaper roundtrip fares available which can defeat the advantage of purchasing as two one-way's. This has nothing to do with what OP is doing which is a simple one-way. These are both CUR-DCA fares being quoted, it's just Google is quoting a cheaper CUR-DCA I fare, while aa.com is quoting a more expensive CUR-DCA R fare due to the lack of married segment availability which Google Flights seems to be ignoring.

No. In the scenario I described, the price difference was significantly more than anything that could be blamed on the exchange rate. The agent specifically commented about the fare being based on the country of origin (but it was nothing to do with currency conversion). I'm not suggesting you're incorrect about the OP's situation, however.

Just had this happen. RDU to LIT, one way 1/1/23 9am flight is $234 for one or two people on aa.com, but $204 when I booked via one person through google trips. Assume google gets a commission when \0 with google flights? Seems like to poor business model on AA part. Saved $60 for us....