[Thepulser]

I was recently told by one of my mates who is a frequent traveller that if you book online, the fare always goes up especially if you log off and on? Airlines normally auto mark up the price pretty much instantly so I was advised to clear cache or refresh my browser to have a better fair?

Is that true? Has anyone had successfully done this?

[handbag]

It is true and does work. Do it all the time. A way to check is go back on the same computer and then look on a different one and you can see for yourself.

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

From experience the reason fares can creep up is when you request a seat on the reservation system it is held for a few minutes under HS status. This means that another request for a flight that might have limited availability will then pick the next free seat which might be the next booking class up and thus quote a higher fare – as the other seats hasn’t released back into system. This will also explain why you can look at a flight in the morning and then see a massive jump in fare – especially if a Business Class “Sale” fare on with an airline – as by afternoon it might have been booked by someone else so you are then taking the next fare level (or 2 even 3) up. Considering you normally have 8-10 fare levels in Economy (multiplied by number of legs), 3 or 4 in Premium, 4-6 in Business and 2 or 3 in First you can have up 676 fare levels on a straight return. This doesn’t take into account Dynamic pricing and multiple fares for the same booking class which can make this higher again.

So yes – clearing cache can sometimes make a difference. But it isn’t always the case that it is simply airlines trying to rip you off (though they want to develop NDC and move away from GDS which will make it easier to charge each customer individually).

[NTarrant]

I always understood that it was Ryanair and EasyJet that did this practice. I have had experiences of where prices have gone down since previously checking, probably under the same reasons as explained by Tim.

[Author]

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