fliesdelta

Yesterday I was pricing RDU-SFO and RDU-SEA for mid to late October and r/t on main cabin was coming up at $380. Today the same dates are coming up as $560. Did I just miss a sale?

xliioper

EF shows a number of cheaper RDU-SFO fares were pulled today, but there were no changes in RDU-SEA fare filings.
You can do RDU-SEA for as low as $368 roundtrip in Main, but it requires Tue/Wed travel. RDU-SFO starts at $575 in Main roundtrip for non-broken fares and $555 for SEA broken fare routings. BE fares on route are $485 and $405 roundtrip, respectively. RDU-SJC fares start at $421 roundtrip in Main (Tue/Wed/Sat travel).

Mr. Tickets

Also, inventory changes constantly.

formeraa

Southwest had a major sales for the past two weeks, ending last night. I'm sure Delta matched them on RDU-SFO/SEA. Southwest always has some sort of fare sale each week from Tuesday morning through Thursday evening, which Delta and the other major carriers usually match. Always best to keep an eye out for this.

xliioper

That's what I thought initially, except WN still has $278 roundtrip fares on RDU-SFO and $298 roundtrip fares on RDU-SEA (Tue/Wed only). DL looks to be matching WN fares currently on RDU-SEA with BE fares also starting at $298 roundtrip.

amieuro

Do either or both of the following:
- clear your cookies and re-try booking .
- clear your cookies / cache and re-try booking ( a day or two later)
- try booking on another computer.

xliioper

It's got nothing to do with cookies. I checked on EF when OP posted yesterday and DL had definitely pulled several cheaper fares on RDU-SFO yesterday compared to what was available on Thursday 8/24 (you can do backdated fare filing checks on EF). However, they have since loaded new fare filings on RDU-SFO and there are now V fares available for $357 roundtrip. So it looks like bad timing and OP was searching during the middle of some fare filing updates. I didn't see any difference in RDU-SEA cheapest fare filings, but they could have been loading updates on those around the same time and the updates had been loaded by time I checked route on EF. There could have also been bucket inventory changes on flights as noted above (which, again, has nothing to do with cookies).

DL RDU-SFO cheapest BE fares start at $202.80 Base fare which looks to roughly match WN cheapest WGA fares which start at $204.24 base. This is pretty typical legacy fare matching strategy with WN on routes where the legacies don't have a dominant position. The WN flights tend to cost somewhat more on this route because it's hard to find single connect options on them and the extra legs add more taxes.

fliesdelta

Perfect. Thank you so much!

andrewk829

I have been watching fares from Seattle to a few potential destinations in Central/Eastern Europe in October, with a particular interest in the Premium Select cabin. About a week ago, they shot up dramatically in one day . . . from low $2000s to mid-upper $3,000s. Analogous increases in economy class and comfort plus fares. Delta One fares just ridiculous during this time frame. I won't pay $8+ per minute for the D1 experience. If the fares do not abate, I may instead do something like book a round trip from SEA to an east coast hub (JFK or BOS), which I could upgrade with a RUC . . . and then "suffer" a separate Economy class ticket for the TATL travel. TATL from the northeastern US is actually quite bearable; not too much longer than a coast-to-coast domestic flight.

xliioper

It's due to changing fare bucket inventory on flights. G fares for SEA-WAW go for $2300 roundtrip in Sep/Oct if you can find flights with G bucket availability in both directions. The small PS cabin sizes tends to result in a lot of variability in bucket availability on each flight as they start to have fewer seats available for sale. There's G bucket open on Sep 18th outbound and Sep 25th return flights. Not really currently seeing anything in October right now. There are cheaper seasonal G fares available for flights on/after October 30th.