Hey guys,

I noticed something strange last night when booking flights and I wanted to get some opinions from people that may know more about it. I fly reasonably often but I always just go online and buy a ticket straight away without much thought so I have never seen this before. Last night just before midnight I was buying tickets just from Sydney to Brisbane. I closed the browser to do something else for five minutes, came back a few minutes after midnight to book and the flights for both Virgin and Qantas had increased from $100 to $140. When I book international flights for a couple of thousand, I'm not surprised when I see a $40 increase the next day, but to see it happen instantly like that with two airlines over a couple of minutes, across all flights, with quite a large percentage increase, it is quite strange.

I can't understand how this is not price fixing? And on top of that, an unjustifiable increase. What are your thoughts?

Cheers

Which dates were you looking at?

I believe price fixing is when they communicated with each other to set pricing. If one carrier decides to match the fares of another without communicating, that is not price fixing.

It was actually across most of the flights over the week at the start of August and that was the only week I looked at. All the flights that hadn't obviously already increased due to high sales increased the same amount. It is the fact that they both increased the same amount at the same moment and a 40% increase at that made me consider it a bit sus and be curious what others thought.

Since when do airlines, or any company, have to "justify" a price increase? What would be your definition of a justified versus an unjustified price increase?

Airfares rise and fall all the time.

It could be that a fare sale ended, or that they use dynamic pricing, and raise fares over the weekend.

I don't believe I said that they had to "justify" a price increase.

I was thinking along those lines Jaimito as that's what I normally observe. However, seeing the two airlines do it at the same moment had me curious if this was normal. Usually I have one carrier in mind so I don't get the opportunity to observe these things.

Either a fare sale ended, or when you crossed midnight you passed a 40-45 day advance purchase requirement for the cheaper fare.

Were the new fares in a different fare class? They don't have to be to go up, but if the cheaper fare class was no longer available after midnight, that screams advance purchase threshold for me.

No blame on the airlines for this one - they can set whatever price they want, whenever they want.

How much does it cost to get to Australia from where you live?

Oh, it's an internal flight. Don't worry.

It's just fare buckets being sold out. You're looking at a very busy route and comparing the price between the two carriers which take pretty much all the corporate travel. As the fare bucket in one airline fills and the price automatically ticks up ticket sales get directed to the other airline which in turn sells out the fare bucket and the price on that rises. It's simply a quite efficient market.

It is the same fare class and the increase stretches months forward. You're probably on the money gooselee and they both just had a sale that ended on the same day which would obviously switch over at midnight. It just seemed strange to me.

Cheers for the input folks.