"Buy! Buy! Buy!!!" My Education In Airline Pricing

Although I have frequently traveled by air, I don't have much experience in buying airline tickets, having left that detail to business associates, travel agents and, often, the lovely Mrs. Gammons.  Last night I received an education in the subject.

We needed to book ourselves on a mid-summer domestic flight.  I had looked into ticket prices a month ago, and found some decent flights for around $300 per person.  To my regret, I didn't buy tickets at that time.

Last night, at the urging of the lovely Mrs. Gammons, I checked prices again.  Holy shit!  The same flight was now $700 apiece, an increase of 133%.  (It was also available for $600 with an 11 hour layover.)

Well, to hell with that!  Let's fly into a different city, then we'll drive a few hours to our destination.  (We rationalized this by recognizing we'll need to rent a car no matter what.)  We found a flight for $400, then watched online in real-time disbelief as the price went up and up before our eyes, literally increasing moment by moment.  Panic time!

"Buy!  Buy!  For cryin' out loud, buy!"  It was like a frenzy on the trading floor of an old-school stock exchange.



By the time we'd completed our purchase, we wound up paying $550 per person, an increase of 37% in roughly half an hour.  No physical exertion was involved, but I was exhausted.  I felt used and abused, exploited, stupid, and more than little pissed off.

Why do airline ticket prices fluctuate so wildly?  An airline's cost of operating a given flight is more or less constant.  So why do their prices rise and fall nonsensically day-to-day, hour-by-hour?

Basically, because they can.  Because there's nothing to stop it.  Supply and demand.  Seller's market.  Profiteering.  Because we allow it.  In a word, capitalism -- the supposed savior of the free world.  Hmmm.

So, what lesson did I learn from this educational experience?  Nothing much of value.  Airline pricing is like an insane auction.  Timing is everything, yet there's no right time or wrong time to buy a ticket.  It's frustratingly unpredictable.  On board, you may be seated beside someone who paid half as much as you did, or perhaps paid double.  The pricing schemes work out well enough for the airlines, but for consumers, there's no rhyme or reason to it.

Imagine if prices for all goods and services were subject to such manic volatility.  OMG!