 |
You get an airfare price drop email alert
or You are “Researching Cheapest Airfares” from the FareCompare.com home page and we show you the cheapest published price calendar. You select your dates and hit “Find Flights” to check for seats and the quoted price doesn’t match up — why not? |
Simple Answer
The simple answer to why the advertised cheapest price doesn’t match the real time flight quote is that the airline decided NOT to sell you a seat at THEIR cheapest advertised price RIGHT NOW on your preferred dates.
Detailed Answer
First, we process airfare information directly from the airlines (only one of a handful of companies that do so) and send out airline ticket price change alerts via email anywhere from two to eight hours before the changes hit the airline websites (we do this so that you can be first to know when prices change), this means the airline reservation system may not be updated yet which is a common reason for a mismatch.
Second, airlines publish about 8 price points for each flight and they decide on a case by case basis — Each Time You Ask for a Real Time Flight Quote — whether or not to sell you the cheapest, 2nd cheapest, 3rd cheapest … price point — they can and do change their minds often (even throughout the day). This is one of the reasons you can ask for three separate quotes at different times of a day on three different airline quoting websites — and get 9 wildly different prices for the same flight. This is the way the airlines reservation systems were designed — to maximize profit of each seat sold on each flight.
Other reasons include the fact that prices change throughout the day (checkout the times of day airlines change their ticket prices) and sometimes we may even have a bug in our quoting system (we process millions of changes a day).
How Do Airlines Decide What Price to Sell You?
They use multi-million dollar software systems to study air travelers buying behavior including:
- How many business travelers paid $800+rt for seats in previous years for this flight — how many can they expect this year
- How well are airline tickets selling so far for this depart and return day
- Is the trip date near a popular holiday or event in the destination city
- Is the departure time on a popular day (Monday, Friday, Sunday) or time of day (8am or 4pm)
- Is the flight non-stop or connecting
- What are other airlines charging right now
- and dozens upon dozens of other variables related air traveler buying behavior
There is no doubt that every air traveler wants the best deal (cheapest advertised price) — myself included — if airlines sold everyone the cheapest price they would be out of business in a week — the reality is that about 10% of passengers on each flight are going to get the best deal — the rest are going to get a “relatively worst deal”.
Most airline ticket shoppers stumble upon a good deal completely by accident — just knowing that a new cheaper price as been filed by an airline puts you way ahead of the pack and gives you a much better chance of being in that elite 10% flying at the cheapest price.
What Can FareCompare.com Do Better?
FareCompare.com is not just another airline quoting system - there are dozens of them on the internet and statistics show most people shop 5 to 6 different sites before purchasing, so you are well aware of them.
We come to work each day working on new airfare technology to try to save you both time (the hassle of hunting for that cheapest advertised price) and money (ferreting out the bets deals from millions of airfare price changes that occur each day).
There is no perfect solution but rest assured we are the only company working day in and day out on making it easier to get the best airfare deals and providing you the information you need to make the best airline ticket purchasing decision.
