Gadling

We’ve all taken econ 101 and know the basic laws of supply and demand. The airlines are not immune to to these rules; they just have greater power to flex them. In finding and booking your ideal ticket, your job is to figure out where demand meets your schedule and to book far enough in advance before the price goes through the roof. But before you can find the cheapest fare, you first need to understand how each seat is priced.

In an earlier discussion about fare buckets, I explained the basics of how fares are coded among classes and prices on an any given plane. While these are different for every airline, most legacy carriers have them grouped into blocks of First, Business, Coach and Award. Among each tier are stratified layers of fares, each with different rules, perks and prices. For 90% of travelers who are only concerned about cost, however, most of that chaff is irrelevant.

Ordinarily, unless one is looking for a particular fare or route, the least expensive fare out of a tier will be sold first. It’s what pops up first in a “search by price” query. As an example, if I’m booking a flight between Detroit and Chicago right now, the deepest discount I can get is on a K fare on Northwest for 49$ one way. If those sell out (and I still want an economy ticket), something in V or T will pop up for 79$ OW.

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In addition to prices fluctuating as a function of availability, they will also change as the date of travel approaches. Typically, barring a fare sale, tickets are least expensive several months before travel. As it gets closer to the day of travel and demand tightens across the board, airlines will often increase the prices. This usually happens one or two weeks out, although around the holiday season and for international fare this will happen up to a couple of months away.

Also consider if any special events are happening around your destination at the time of travel. If one of the pricing jockeys at the airline know that demand should be higher during that time, they’ll make sure that the ticket prices stay high.

In some rare instances, last minute fares will become available at super discounted rates. Sites like lastminute.com capitalize on buying blocks of last minute tickets, packaging them with hotel or car rentals and selling a bundled deal. With recent volumes and demand as high as they have been lately, I wouldn’t plan on making getting a great deal this way; if you’ve got an important date where you can’t miss a flight, please don’t rely on this method.

The few times that a last minute fare has worked for me have been when I didn’t really need to go anywhere. Sitting at my cubicle on a Wednesday afternoon I’ve gotten great deals from Lastminute and assorted airline sale pages to head out for the weekend. But it was totally spontaneous travel.

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It’s pretty rare, but occasionally tickets will go down in price. Usually this is because of a fare sale (advertised or UNadvertised) or change to the market that dictates decrease in demand. Southwest Airlines’ entry into the Detroit – Baltimore market a few years back caused prices between the two cities to plummet because supply went way up and demand stayed the same. These days I can get away with a ticket between the two for about a hundred bucks, where earlier it was almost twice that much.

Carriers often have seasonal sales when demand goes down (so book tickets in the high season even earlier!). Three to five months before the winter “low” season starts, you’ll often see advertised fares a little lower than market on some of the major carriers. In my experience, however, these are minor in comparison to some of the larger “unadvertised” sales that will sneak into the fare schedule.

Airlines will also occasionally squabble among one another for demand among a particular city. Last year Delta suddenly dropped fares between Chicago and Buenos Aires (a United hub), prompting a miniature unadvertised fare war between the two carriers. Those in the know jumped all over the tickets and ended up getting 600$ tickets to South America.

The point is that fare sales are fairly few and far between; the primary factor for pricing is still volume of open seats, so its foolish to assume that a great ticket will swoop in and save the day.

One trick that few travelers keep in mind, however, is that most airlines have a reticketing policy on their tickets. That is, if the price of your ticket goes down, you can call, reprice your ticket and they’ll give your extra money back. Often there is a reticketing fee and occasionally they’ll only refund your money in a voucher form, but it’s still currency you can use at a later time. Check with your carrier to see what the specifics are of their reticketing policy.

Knowing this, it’s best to run a search every week or so to see if a miracle has occurred and your ticket price has gone down. If the discrepancy in sale price is great enough, give the airline a call and make some changes to your fare.

It’s always handy to know how much you should be paying for a flight between two cities. Many professionals can pick a random city pair and availability window and give you a price off the top of his or her head. Until recently, that was pretty much the way to do it. With the age of the interwebs upon us however, several sites have started compiling and comparing the wealth of airline fare data that has been accumulating over the years.

• My favorite, Farecompare, is a powerful tool that not only tracks legacy data but keeps uber-accurate track of the current fares. It takes a fair amount of interpretation to garner the best data from their database, including airline feeds and international taxes. Be patient and tinker around with the software during your weekly management meeting and you’ll learn a ton. Farecompare also has a pretty neat guide for buying tickets on their frontpage, although most of that is geared around their site.
• Although Kayak is no longer the secret that it used to be, this metacrawler is the one of the most efficient, well-written search engines out there. In addition to a powerful flex search, you can also look at basic fare trends. If you guys are watching, don’t sell out!
• Yapta and Farecast are two tools that are just coming out of the starting gates. Still in their infancy (Farecast used to be only for select city pairs) they’re now expanding their service to some of the larger markets. One neat thing that Faretracker does is give you a probability that your ticket is going to fall in price. As I said earlier though, it’s a black art; not even the professionals will commit to any prices.

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