Fare difference due to OTA time zone?
 

I was planning to book business class tickets for our family travelling back to UAE, so I checked the fares 2-3 days ago on EK website departing from WAW. Today I wanted to go ahead and book them, the price was unchanged apart from slight currency fluctuations. While booking I was distracted by a phone call. The session has expired so I had to start again and to my surprise the prices went up on all days as I checked flexible calendar as well. So I started checking some others websites which I sometimes book through and it was confirmed the price went up. I then went to Expedia to give it one more check and the price was the same as before EK price increase! Therefore I booked it immediately saving almost $700.

It seems EK was adjusting its fares at around 01:00 CEST time but the old fares were still available in other time zones like Expedia in US. I guess in a few hours time "US" fares will get adjusted as well. Have you noticed something like this before?

Yes, when fares ex Brasil were available without fuel surcharges, they always changed later than those I priced up in the UK. Again, Expedia was a favourite for this using their .br site and Chrome to translate.

Surely it depends on the timezone of the fare's point of sale?

Yes it looks like, however EK does not allow you to book through US website flights originating from Europe but Expedia does. Today's price on Expedia for the same is +$700 in line with EK Europe. Also the credit card was charged by EK directly (Emirates Seattle Tacoma-US), despite booking through Expedia. I thought the fare system is pretty much centralised, so it was interesting to see something like this.

If there is a fare that has to be ticketed by a specific date / or advance purchase requires purchase N days in advance, I have seen this

Since it works purely on a calendar day, time zone impacts availability

e.g. for today if a fare has to be ticketed by 3rd July , it will have to be purchased within 9 hours in Auckland, but there is still 31 hours left to purchase in Honolulu

Country jumping is a way of dealing with missing it in a local country

Or just the ability to use a telephone - online it doesn't matter wat your IP address is, what matters is the country of the travel agent

Makes sense - thanks!

Is that how it works with Emirates? Years ago I was dealing with this on Northwest Airlines. The ticket had to be issued by midnight. I spoke to a ticketing agent, and she said the deadline goes by the time at the departure city, regardless of the location of ticketing. So it doesn't make any difference (to the old Northwest Airlines anyway) where you are, or your VPN locale, or the ticketing agent's location. Is the deadline reached at the departure city? If so, it's over.

Whether an agent was stating something correctly for NW would not be something that I would assume. Even if that is how NW had policies for, that wouldn't impact a travel agent. The AP requirements do not go down to minutes, but simply on days. If it is a one day Advance Purchase, then the ticket can be purchased anytime up until 23:59 on the previous day. A 14:00 departure with a 1 day AP requirement , does not need to be purchased before 14:00 but any time that day. It just happens that there are about 48 hours in a day ( starting from furthest east to furthest west )

True, but what the NWA agent told me aligned with what was happening in real life. I tend to believe that it was correct.

However, you are correct in that this doesn't mean that it applies to a travel agent, or to all airlines.