Price goes up...price goes down...price goes up...the tedious and odd airfare travel game:
While it may not come close to the excitement of your Grand Theft Auto
video game, or interest your friends on a Saturday night like Monopoly, beers
and fondue, the tedious, addictive and somewhat odd game of travel airfare is
something that keeps me coming back for more. It has become such an addiction,
that I find myself sometimes looking for airfare to places that I never plan on
visiting. Sad maybe...but as someone who loves to travel, and finding a good deal,
it has become a habit of mine when I am looking to kill a few minutes online. I mean
I can only take so much election coverage...ok maybe not, but still the game of
checking online fares is something that not only feeds the travel monster in me, but also leaves me scratching my head in confusion.
Here are a few examples of why I always tell people to never book a trip on a whim or without doing any research. Let me preface this journey by telling you that I am currently looking for airfare to Europe right now, and found a great deal twicw...only to not book it in time and find it gone hours later. It is like the stock market...except chances are the government is not going to bail you out if you book a flight for say $900 and hours later it drops to $500. Now searching with one of the internet's top travel search engines Kayak.com, I came across a sweet heart of a deal. New York to Warsaw, Poland for $667 during the Christmas holiday! Now many of you might say, "Poland in December? Are you nuts!"...and I answer that with...yes, yes I am. But I love cold destinations and really love Europe at Christmas time.
So I see this great deal on Air France, and immediately tell my significant other about it. We converse, and say that this is too good to be true, most flights to Poland are $900 and up. So we sit on the idea, and say we will decide in the morning. Well morning comes and...the flight's price has changed...drastically. The bargain deal of $667 to Warsaw is now priced at $1090! Yes within 8 hours (11pm to 7am) Air France had jacked the price up $423! Ouch!
Frustrated, annoyed and a little hungry I decided to turn off my laptop and focus on some other things around the apartment. Who am I kidding, I checked that fare every other hour on the hour. It would come back the same price all day. The next morning after reading some emails I decide to go gambling again with airfares. I put in the airport codes, dates and click search. Results are lower, $899...eh, while that is decent for a trip to Europe at Christmas time, I still feel burned by that $667 price. Being the frugal traveler that I am, I go back to work and decide not to check prices until later in the day. I come back and its still $899. One hour later its $1090 again! D'oh! One hour after that it is $995. How did this end up? Well more on that in a moment.
Airlines play this fun game of raising and lowering prices to compete with each other. For example when Delta released on their site a JFK-Chicago round trip deal for $189, American Airlines found out about it and offered the same trip for $149. Well Delta's people see this $149 deal and lower it to $144. It is the ultimate game of out doing each other between the big airline companies.
Another example of when an airline changed its fare, and it really had me wondering, "why?", was when British Airways was offering a round trip deal from JFK to London for $780 round trip. I click on the Kayak link to the airline and find out that this fare is no longer available. Now in the past that meant an increase of $50,$100 or sometimes as high as $400. But in this case the fare had changed from $780 to $780.56! Yes British Airways had raised their fare two quarters, a nickel and a penny.
Finally, back to my New York-Poland experiment. So I am stuck at the bargain price of $995...yeah right. So 3 days after losing out on that fare of $667, and not hearing the end of it from my wife, I keep checking and even making my dates flexible. That is something most people do not understand about travel. Even the days you leave could save or cost you hundreds. So first I check my original dates and its $1090 again, but when I change it to coming home 1 day later, the fare is $623! Yes the lowest fare I have ever seen round trip from JFK to Warsaw and about $40 lower than my dream price 4 days earlier.
But sadly this story does not have a happy ending. I waited...again! Then two hours later that amazing fare jumped back up, and as I write this, is currently $880. A few lessons can be learned from this airfare game of travel hunting:
- Make sure you always use a travel search engine to get the lowest price. Just going to an Airline's website or a travel site like Expedia or Orbitz could cost you big time.
- When you find a low price on a site like Kayak, understand that the price may change within the day, the hour or just a few minutes from the time you see it online. So if it is a sweet deal, act fast, but again do not impulse buy...make sure it is indeed a good deal, and then snatch it up before its too late.
- Be flexible...make sure you check off various airports and various dates when searching airfare. For example in the New York area, a flight from JFK to Orlando may be cheaper than a flight from nearby LaGuardia to Orlando.
- The best days to check for good airfare deals are Tuesday and Wednesday. The worst days to look are Saturday and Monday.
I will continue looking, and trust me, the next time I see my fare for under $700 I will not hesitate!
