I was about to book a fare HKG-LAX on Asiana earlier today and it was $625 for the one way but I wasn't sure of the date so I waited till now. So get this, the exact flight is now $1174, I kid you not! The flight is for April 12th so it''s not a last minute purchase. How can a fare jump so much in a matter of hours?

I'm going to assume you're not asking the question rhetorically (like the FT thread where the original poster insists that all of the airlines flying to/from Japan are horribly price gouging because of his singular data point).

It's not as if the airlines have their executives laughing maniacally as they push a button to raise prices just because they think they can. On most routes which have a competitive marketplace (HKG-LAX qualifies), commercial airlines will use yield management software to try to maximize revenue of their flights, based on historical data and reasonable predictions about what the future holds versus the past. So, given a certain number of seats in the economy cabin on the non-stop and connecting flights that they can use to offer transportation, and that some seats are already actually booked, the yield management software will allocate remaining seats to different fare bases (sometimes known as fare buckets). In your example, at the time you checked initially, the airline may have had 25 seats available for sale at $1174, 3 seats for sale at $900, and 1 seat for sale at $625. Just hours later, somebody buying just 4 seats on the flight will cause the price offered to you to jump from $625 to $1174. Over time, the yield management software will re-evaluate the situation and may make seats available at the cheaper fare bases again in the future.

Then, one relevant factor to consider right now is there's probably a lot of rapid chaotic flight reservation changes being made due to the developing situation in Japan regarding the nuclear reactors impacted by the earthquake/tsunami. Crises like this make the historical data that yield management software depend on nearly useless. I think it's reasonably to believe that by itself (without assigning evil motives to the airlines) can cause some seemingly wild swings in prices. However, overall, supply & demand suggests that the price for travel between the U.S. and South Asia NOT involving connections through Japan could end up going up as consumer demand for the supply of seats that DO connect through Japan wanes.

You sure about this?

A similar thing happened to me in January, when I booked a ticket from ORD to SIN (for travel in March) on UA/SQ. On Saturday evening, the price was $1600 but I didn't buy it since I wasn't sure of the dates. By the time I decided to buy it on Sunday morning, the price for the same itinerary jumped up to $4000. Luckily I decided to wait and the price came back down to $1600 on Sunday night when I bought it.

Its a mess isn't it ?
I've been looking for a fare SFO- LIT/ MEM Fare is $400 one minute, $700 the next.
I know of one airline who uses the " yield management software " The name??
Predator!

Shop around, try different dates.

BW

Sale fares come and go. They can be greater than 50% off of the "structured" fares. Miss the last ticket date, and the sale is gone. Inventory buckets come and go. Deeply discounted ones have limited capacity. Miss getting one of those and the higher buckets may have significantly greater prices.

Trans-pacific journeys have significantly longer booking curves than say a SFO-LAX flight. Under a month is not really considered a large advanced purchase. Most people make their trans-pacific plans much further out than 1 month in. The bigger the plane, the bigger the demand for that flight. Expect them to have more bookings on them 3 weeks before dptr than a tiny plane in a commuter market. Those that book early get the discounted (capacity controlled) buckets, those that book late get the less controlled buckets, and they usually cost more.

sure, I do realize that prices change but I was just shocked at the amount of the change.. almost double! There are other carriers that are offering the same route for around $680 or so but I'll probably wait and see if Asiana comes down in the next few days

I just did that exact search on Asiana's website and it came to $640.90 all in. Flights 722 connecting in SEL to 204. Try your search again.

Are prices in general just going crazy? I'm trying to book a EWR-SFO flight in late April and it has been sitting north of $550 if not around $700 for a few weeks now. Is all the unrest and oil prices causing this? Not sure what to do, may have to use miles..

If the fare goes back down, then buy it.

Unfortunately the search does not work for me, I get some message about the site being out of order. Are you sure you booked HKG to LAX and not LAX to HKG?

http://img710.imageshack.us/f/sshotr.jpg/

In any case I was able to book another similar Asiana flight leaving a bit later for $635 with a 15 hour layover in Seoul, looks like I will just have to use the opportunity to see Seoul for the day

But in general I think $630 is a bit too much for a 1 way flight over the pacific...

Yea, it was tough booking it that way as the website didn't want to allow that option, but by starting off as HKG-LAX , then switching the cities around after the search, it allowed me to book. We came within $5.00 of each other, so not such a bad guess as to price.

If your travel is at least 2 weeks in advance, I will try to check the next day.

The price probably didn't change, but rather the bucket with the cheaper fare sold out and it then offered you a ticket from a much more expensive bucket.