United Airlines Ticket Pricing Puzzle

I don't fly United often, so this is just a possible guess. Many airlines don't allow you to mix their lowest fares (the super restricted ones with no seats, luggage, etc) with their regular economy tickets. Could this be a factor in what you are seeing?

Try using an igcognito browsing window when shopping for airfares, I've heard it helps.

Carol and Ruth,

Both good thoughts.

I got the same lowest round trip fare but once for the same dates as before using a private window. But changing the dates by only a day or three or four, that same low fare showed up only one time on the departure date - until I selected it. Then it popped up on a few other nearby departure dates, only to lead to it being found nowhere among 55-71 possible flights on the next page. I'd say it's darn close to a bait and switch, the different fare classes notwithstanding.

What are the advantages to - or differences in - using a private window over a regular one? How might that change the outcome?

As Churchill said of the USSR, "Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Ditto United's pricing scheme.

I am not a believer in the clear-your-cookies-to-avoid-price-spikes tactic. I've never seen that suggested by a knowledgeable source (as opposed to some random journalist trying to fill out a column). I'm in no position to say with absolute certainty that it isn't helpful, though.

I do my price-shopping on Google Flights (which does not itself sell tickets). After I make my selection--after repeated searches over days/weeks or even months, I go to the airline website to make the purchase. I don't believe I've ever seen a fare change during a single browsing sessiont, but I absolutely believe that other people have.

My theory is that the initial fares displayed may not all be based on fresh data. I don't think all flight-search websites check every single airline database/website every time someone does a search. I think there may be some data cached from previous searches that can show up in the initial display. When the customer goes further into the transaction, the website refreshes the data and finds the currently available fare. (No, my knowledge in this area is not any better than that of a random journalist trying to fill out a column.)

The other possibility is that if you spend enough time browsing and thinking, another customer or two might hop in and buy the last ticket(s) available at the price you were looking at. I've certainly seen event tickets disappear off TicketMaster while I was trying to find the best seat available.

The suggestion that some upward price adjustments are due to rules against mixing some fare classes makes a great deal of sense to me. I have a feeling that's part of what is going on.

Thanks for chiming in AC.

The fares I've been seeing for many weeks now act like a bag of jumping beans or a classroom of kindergartners. They never sit still and even fluctuate wildly within a matter of seconds. And, as I noted before, they at times revert back to the same or similar low-low fare that was initially posted.

One of my thoughts when I first encountered this peculiar behavior was that others had bought up the lowest fares while I was searching. I discounted that theory when those fares reappeared on the same or nearby dates within a day or two.

I also search on Google Flights, then head right over to the airline's website where more often than not, some attractive fare I saw on Google does not exist.

To clarify, these roller coaster fares appear only on the United website.

That does sound odd, David. I wonder whether there might be a technical glitch involved. But if so, you'd think it would have been fixed by now.

We had premium economy plus airfare booked with United into Edinburgh and out of Dublin. Then United changed our itinerary a few weeks after I had booked them. Our flights coming home became economy seats on Lufthansa which was obviously not what we paid for. Plus on Lufthansa we would have had to pay to reserve our seats and their premium economy plus were not what I consider premium economy plus. I called United and they said wait a month and call us back and we probably will have changed your tickets back to premium. There were almost no premium seats on that return flight and they were lousy seats. I chose not to sit and wait. I kept an eye on the airfares for the return flight for a few days. I saw a premium economy flight for the return but it was $100 more for each of us. I waited another day and found another flight for the $2 less than the price that I had booked. I grabbed that flight, reserved good seats and got $4 back. My point is that flight prices change a lot from one day to the next. Everything flight wise is in flux right now. I expect between now and our scheduled flight I will probably have to rebook our flights again.

The constant changes (bait and switch?) occur only on the United site, not Google Flights, and it's been ongoing for many weeks. When I wrote that the fares fluctuate wildly like a bag of jumping beans, that's to say picking a date or changing a date appears to instigate that erratic fluctuation. But to have an attractive fare disappear entirely is, well, suspicious.