We’ve all browsed for a fare multiple times with an airline or travel site and had the price increase. Of course flight prices can go up due to sudden demand, but it’s worth taking into consideration that cookies are the culprit. If a booking site sees that you have interest in a particular flight it may bump up the price.
If you had a lower fare and can’t get it again, try deleting your cookies and redo the search. Or try the same search on another computer. You might find that you get the original price back again. There seems to be some controversy over whether this is true, but people say they have proved it. Here’s some talk about the “Cookie Conspiracy.”
Other Considerations For Getting A Cheap Flight
- Check the airline sites directly, they sometimes offer deals better than booking engines
- Check prices to fly into alternative airports
- Book early to get savings
- Be flexible, fly midweek and/or check prices for the first and last flight of the day
- Fly on the actual holiday day, instead of the days prior to it
- Sign up for email alerts from sites like Travel Zoo or Travel Alerts
- Even if you are flying one way check the round trip price, it might be cheaper!
- Go to a destination in the shoulder or off season, like Europe in November
- Be aware of extra charges, such as baggage fees
- Try the old fashion method of a travel agent, they may have access to exclusive deals
Not picky about where you travel to? An interesting site to try, Skyscanner. Type in where you want to fly from and it will show you deals available to many destinations in the world.
Booking Sites To Try:
In The United States check Southwest, they do not share prices with the booking sites, and the following airlines may have site exclusive deals:
In Canada:
Now that it is getting overwhelming with so many booking engines there are sites that check multiple ones for you. Momondo and Mombissimo are two such sites that will search for fares through hundreds of sources.
medieval says
The cookies thing is definately true. I’d never heard of it untill last week when a friend was looking for cheap flight to Australia. Found a flight for 400€ 2 hrs later it was at 600€ – deleted cookies and strait back to 400€ – Incredible that they do this !
Audrey says
There are probably a lot of people that are paying higher prices because they don’t know about deleting the cookies. It makes sense, as soon as a website knows you are interested in a particular fare they will jack up the price each time you look at it again.