Why do I sometimes find lower fares on your system than a different site or vice versa?

 

First, it’s important to ensure that a true “apples to apples” comparison is being made.  Even a short time between a fare search can result in drastically different fares.  If a fare category point such as 21 days, 14 days, or 7 days before departure is triggered during the time between searches, you might no longer qualify for the lower category fare.

 

The search parameters should also be the same.  If you exclude connecting flights on one search, and allow them on the other, a different fare could result.

 

The same would apply to departure time, airport used, etc.  Even a slight difference in departure time could result in a markedly different fare since a lower fare category sold-out on Flight A might still be available on Flight B.

 

The major airlines divide available seats on a flight into a number of fare categories called Fare Buckets in the nomenclature of the industry.  A flight with a maximum capacity of 150 seats, for example, would typically have 9 fare buckets or categories.  The sale of a single seat in any fare bucket can cause the airline’s pricing system to redistribute remaining seats to different buckets and/or adjust the fare in one or more buckets.  This is why you can check a fare and literally a minute later check it again and find a different fare.  If these two searches happen to be on different systems, it would appear that the difference is between the two systems.

 

Some travel sites don’t display the complete cost of a ticket until the final booking screens are reached.  Our system displays the full cost, including taxes, passenger facility charges, etc, with the beginning screens.  If another site doesn’t take this approach, a confusing fare difference, that really isn’t a difference at all, appears to be present.  Since these fares and charges can add up to 25% of the total ticket cost, it can appear to be quite material.

 

Some auction and other special pricing sites use restricted inventory meaning that any post ticketing changes are limited to that same seat inventory category.  In this case, the company operating the site, pre-purchases these seats and re-sells them at a mark-up.  The problem comes with flight delays, misconnects, cancellations, etc. on the day of travel.  In that circumstance, with these types of tickets, the airline refers the passenger back to the place where they bought the ticket for assistance. That company then must have available seats on a different flight to re-book the passenger so they can continue their trip.  For this reason, we exclude these types of fares even if they’re lower.