USA with Aer Lingus - Wild Price fluctuations

B

Buckshee

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Travelling to Orlando early July 2009 and home from New York in a party of seven. We have been watching the flight prices on the aer Lingus Site and up ontil 3 days ago the price for Dublin-Orlando out and New York- Dublin back was €925 per adult. We have our accomodation booked but decided to watch the flight prices for a while before booking in the hope that there might be a sale or the fuel surcharges might reduce or something similar.

Last night at approx. 10pm we checked again and for no apparent reason the exact same flights on the same dates were then priced at €698 per adult. Needless to say we jumped straight in and booked them ( had to make 2 bookings as max of six per booking allowed but price didn't change for the single person on the 2nd booking and then we pre booked the seven seats together on the plane). We were all feeling rightly chuffed at our good fortune at saving €225 per person and even more so when this morning the price is now €934 per person.

Strange but true and we're certainly not complaining but how does this happen when there was no sale for July 2009 ?????

Hopefully some more got lucky also
 
Sounds like your attentiveness got you a very good deal, Buckshee. Well done. Hope you all have a great trip next year. I hope Aer Lingus dont claim they made a mistake and come looking for the extra €200+ per ticket!

This summer I was watching flight prices on the American Airlines website. When I tried to book online at a certain price, the transaction would not go to completion. When I telephoned AA, I was told that price was no longer available and I was quoted one about €100 dearer. When I queried this, I was offered a fare midway between the two prices. Fearing the fare would only increase further, I bought the ticket at the "midway" offered price.
In the following weeks, I kept an eye on the website and the fare quoted remained at the original price I first noticed and tried to book! I did not try to complete a second transaction online as I did not want another ticket.
But if, as the person on the telephone at AA told me, that fare was no longer available, I wonder how come it was still being advertised online?
 
I have heard that Ryanair in particular charge more for the same flights at peak internet usage times. So for example at lunch time flights tend to be more expensive than say at 10.30am. Equally after 5pm the price goes up. I had a friend who was Spanish and regularly travelled home and found that if you logged on at peak times the prices were higher and the same flights, on same day etc the following day at off peak times were cheaper consistently over reasonably long periods of time i.e at least a week.

Try logging on at different times and see if it makes a difference.
 
I am at a stage with Ryan Air that I type in a date at least a week before I want to travel, in case "Big Brother" is watching my dates!!!!!
 
Airline revenue management systems have key forecast dates built in them. If on reaching one of the key dates (e.g. sixty days from departure - but not saying that is one of the dates!) the number of bookings on the flight is lower than expected, more seats will be released at a lower price to attract more bookings. It looks like you got in at those dates!

Another thing that may happen is that a load of cancellations open up a cheaper class, but given that there are generally no refunds these days if you cancel, that is unlikely unless it was a group holding space that didn't come through.
 
yoganmahew said:
Airline revenue management systems have key forecast dates built in them. If on reaching one of the key dates (e.g. sixty days from departure - but not saying that is one of the dates!) the number of bookings on the flight is lower than expected, more seats will be released at a lower price to attract more bookings.
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Very interesting..... but would it be correct to assume that booking now for a Christmas (23rd Dec) flight from LHR-DUB on EI is not likely to go down in price from today? Should I buy now - the return all in is STG127.
 
Toothpick said:
Very interesting..... but would it be correct to assume that booking now for a Christmas (23rd Dec) flight from LHR-DUB on EI is not likely to go down in price from today? Should I buy now - the return all in is STG127.
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If your on 2.50 euro per hour STG127 would be pretty expensive, but seeing as most people are not on this rate anymore I would go for it.
 
If you go on to www.travelocity.com and click on Fare Alert you can specify your flight and your price and they will notify you if the price ever drops below that rate.
 
Toothpick said:
Very interesting..... but would it be correct to assume that booking now for a Christmas (23rd Dec) flight from LHR-DUB on EI is not likely to go down in price from today? Should I buy now - the return all in is STG127.
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Peak Christmas flights ... doubt you'll end up beating that £127 all in is fairly good for that ... 23rd would be one of the busiest days of the year probably
 
http://www.skyscanner.net/


Always found this site really good for looking across airline for flights. Will show you all airlines on a particular route & then you can go to that airline's site and book. Can be very good for Europe but not as good outside of that.

No Affliation
 
Also bear in mind the possibility of industrial action at Aer Lingus following todays announcement that they want to shed 1500 jobs.
 
Brownie10 said:
http://www.skyscanner.net/


Always found this site really good for looking across airline for flights. Will show you all airlines on a particular route & then you can go to that airline's site and book. Can be very good for Europe but not as good outside of that.

No Affliation
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I have also used skyscanner and found it a very useful site.

I was told that if you log onto certain sites including Ryanair, that a cookie will be left on your computer or their computer will record your computer address and what flights you looked at. If you don't take the price offered there and then, and come back to the site later, having spoken with your travelling partners and confirmed the flights suitability with them, the Ryanair computer will recognise the cookie/your address, and knowing that the most probable reason you are back looking at that particular flight again, is that you intend to actually make a booking, Ryanair will then offer you the flight at an increased price, the size of the increase depends on how full the plane is.

If on the other hand you use Skyscanner to check price and availability of flights, Ryanairs computer is unable to put its cookies on your machine and when you are redirected by Skyscanner to the Ryanair site to make the booking, you get the cheapest available.

Least that was how it was explained to me.


Murt
 
Murt10 said:
I have also used skyscanner and found it a very useful site.

I was told that if you log onto certain sites including Ryanair, that a cookie will be left on your computer or their computer will record your computer address and what flights you looked at.
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Use a free download like Adaware to scrub your machine of cookies. Sure it means losing those that you use a lot to save time, (they'll self restore when you next log onto those sites) but that should combat the Ryanair cookie-ware scenario you describe, which by the way sounds positively demonic and could only come from the brain of Michael O'Leary.
 
Wooaah! Thanks for that - too busy tracking out of business banks to notice... I think I'll whip out the credit card and pay for that Christmas trip right now - but if they are crippled on flight day I'm screwed.
 
EvilDoctorK said:
Peak Christmas flights ... doubt you'll end up beating that £127 all in is fairly good for that ... 23rd would be one of the busiest days of the year probably
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Sad update.... I paid £165 sterling (including a 16 quid bag fee) 2 weeks ago figuring the price wouldn't dip much lower if at all - being Christmas etc., and just for a perverse thrill I checked today and it's now at £76!! Almost half price. So much for the wisdom of advance booking....I suppose unless you have inside information it's not possible to "guess the market" so to speak.
 
D'oh ... very surprising at such a peak time they're discounting so much ... I know the airline business isn't doing well, but if Aer Lingus can't fill their flights home for Xmas at a reasonable yield then times must be bad for them indeed.
 
The cookie issue doesnt just apply to ryanair, aerlingus use this all the time to increase the prices of their flights. Basically if you have already searched for a flight on aerlingus doing a second search increases the cost of the flight.

To test it out: Do a search for any flight on aerlingus, close the window/tab and then come back and do another search. Your second search will almost always be more expensive. Now close your window/tab again and clear your cookies (you can clear just the aerlingus to avoid hassle on other sites if you know how). Come back for a third time and do a search with your cookies cleared and the price will have reset to the original price.
 
susan12 said:
I have heard that Ryanair in particular charge more for the same flights at peak internet usage times.
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The "I have heard" about Ryanair story keeps going around. I have never come across it and I browse their website a couple of times a day.
 
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