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As someone who flies often, I have seen air fares change at different times of the day, different days of the week, and even different months of the year. Whenever I find an airfare that is attractive to me, I buy it and do not look back.

Airfares can change many times a day. The airlines now use sophisticated software to maximize revenue, and there's no way to know what a fare will be until you actually "look and book." Furthermore, even if you've just done a search, sometimes when you press "buy" the fare is gone (this is apparently a glitch in the underlying software that the various websites use). I haven't had this happen in a while, so maybe this glitch has been fixed, but it used to happen a lot. Very annoying. The "rule" for booking is to start looking early, so you know what the "standard" fare on your route is. Then, when you see a good fare, you will be ready to jump; if you wait (say, to converse with your travel companions), it will most likely be gone. Also, be flexible, if you can, about departure and arrival airports. For instance, using Italy as an example, sometimes for no clear reason it's several hundred dollars cheaper to fly into Rome and out of Venice instead of the other way around. However, don't make the false economy mistake of flying somewhere just because it's cheap. If you want to go to Italy, fly to Italy, not to Frankfurt. The money "saved" will be eaten up by the money and time it will take to get from Frankfurt to Italy. Two good search engines for airfares are http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ and http://www.kayak.com/.

I am an advocate of clearing your cache ( cookies) when returning to a web site. I found Continental was particularly prone to offering the best fare the first time, and when rechecking it those fares were gone. Have not booked enough United to see if that's a software trick with them, but it cannot hurt.

That whole "clear your cookies to get cheaper fares" is an urban legend. Both Consumer Reports, and National Geographic Traveler, have investigated it and side with the airline's contention that they don't raise or lower prices based on web site visits. Fares go up and down everyday based on load factors and advanced software programs described above.

I had a similar experience when booking a ticket with KLM online, but it had nothing to do with timing. I had my tickets selected and was in the process of buying when I got down to the payment button the fare was no longer available and in fact it was TRIPLE! This happened over and over. I finally got their online support folks on the phone and he got me the ticket for within $100 of my original fare (I had to take the return because I had already bought my daughter's ticket and although she left on a different day/time, we wanted to come home together). The online guy tried to tell me that it might be because I had gotten to their website by using google, but that was not true. I also filed a complaint as it was still working the same way the next day. Delta (who is the US carrier for KLM/Air France) was sympathetic, but because it was booked on KLMs website, I had to deal with them and they acknowledged receipt of my complaint, but never got back to me). All I can say is BEWARE if you are booking flights online with carriers that use mulitple entities like Delta/KLM/Air France and if you fall down the rabbit hole like I did, phone their online customer support and see what they can do for you.

I heard the cookies thing as well. Urban legend or no, because I have been checking the website so often (neurotically?) I got an email from them asking if I was planning a trip to Naples, so it's plausible and easy to clear the cache/cookies. No matter what happens, I have learned a lot from you all, and I feel so very much better about my horrid mistake. No ticket yet, but I'm not going until September, so that's okay, right? right?

Try calling the airline. Sometimes it is worth the booking fee if they can find a cheaper flight for you. Also, keep checking every few hours...the same thing has happened to me and then the flight went back down.

Airfares can change within hours and commonly do. If you see a fare that is really good, grab it. Also, many of the larger travel sights (Orbitz in particular is notorious for this) show you what shows up in the database, but this isn't live. If you get a "We're sorry but this fare is not longer available..." message, then it was never then. It was a phantom that was already snapped up. To be fair to Orbitz, sometimes it works the other way: They have fares that in every other website are already marked as being sold out, resulting in better fares.

Interesting news article today about Orbitz offering more expensive hotels if a search is done via a Mac computer rather than a Windows based machine.

I heard the report today. I have an old pc that still runs, and I can see me with my Macbook on my lap switching between! No, for international flights I found that I'm a special case (princess pauper). I finally spent my time wisely finding a great travel agent who seemed to want me to arrive in good shape more than I did. ETBD was so right again!