Business Class Chaos

Apparently, as the number of seats decreases on a given flight, the remaining seats go up in price.
Anyone else have this experience?

Everyone has. That is the way the capitalist system of supply and demand pricing works.

I guess what you are doing is looking at prices in November, then buying in January? Yes prices will change. Maybe go up, but sometimes go down. If you go to the airlikne website and you look up a flight and it gives you a price, you should be able to check out at that price at that time on that day.

Real time price adjustments based on how many tickets were just sold, how many are on a fare’s webpage, what type of people are on the page, and even who (what type demographically) you are etc— that’s modern price optimization. By which I mean, they optimize right out of your pocket into theirs! Different carriers are use it more or less. If they do it right, you never notice!

It’s supposed to go both ways though. Spontaneous price drops!

Tis a brave new world! But doing special deal sales (or removing them) has been going on since time immemorial.

Good luck and happy travels!

I wouldn't call it business class chaos. It happens in economy also.

Demand-based pricing is now a regular thing in sports and travel ticketing.

Once your choices are in your cart the price should not change during the time it takes you to check out. Wait an hour or so and it can. Are you sure you are not looking at ticket price to make your selection then final cost which has all the associated fees?

Are you including the advance seat selection fee for Air Canada that is additional?

It's got nothing to do with business class, and it's not really chaos, it's business as usual in the travel industry, same as many other businesses that are seeking to squeeze the most money out of every customer.

Keep in mind that many airlines offer a 24 - 48 hour fare lock for a minimal fee, so if you see an attractive fare but need to confer with others or confirm related bookings, you can hold the fare with only minor expense. In addition, you typically have a 24 hour period after purchasing a ticket in which you can back out and get a full refund - this may not extend to seat reservation fees.

I have not had this experience at all with either United or Delta. I have flown on these airlines in 2023, 2024, and 2025 and ticket prices never fluctuated in the process of purchasing them.

I wonder whether the carriers you’re looking at are showing rock bottom fares before ad ons like seat assignments? OR are you seeing two one way fares and making the assumption that’s the round trip fare? Some airlines price their fares that way, and when you get to the purchase page you discover the actual price is flight A plus flight B — obviously much higher than if you assumed the cost of flight B was the cost of the entire trip.

I booked tickets this fall for travel this coming June on United. nonstop Newark to Paris (business class) with a nonstop return in Comfort Economy. I tracked fares for weeks. When I purchased tickets the fare was exactly what I had seen at the start of the booking session. I continued to track fares and rebooked the same tickets for significantly less money when the fares dropped early this winter. Again, the fares I saw initially were the fares I saw at the end.

You might try searching on one computer, then using a different computer to book. Websites can drop cookies to track you and once they know you are interested, the price goes up.

Websites can drop cookies to track you and once they know you are interested, the price goes up.

This is a myth.

"This is a myth."

Maybe, maybe not.

This Guardian author had it happen to them but it's anecdata at this point.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2010/aug/07/computer-cookies-booking-online

[snip]
I went back to the beginning. Sure enough, the site remembered my details, knew the destination I was looking for, and, once again, gave me £212. But then I deleted cookies and removed the browsing history. Starting the booking process again, the website no longer knew my details and did not pre-populate any of the information fields. And the price of the flight, a few seconds later? It was back to £187.