Price change (differential)
Hi there!
I was reading your post and would like to clarify the points of your argument;
1. The prices of airline seats vary in what is called fare levels, each airline has different fare levels hence each fare level is associated with a different letter for eg: Y,N,M,B,E, for economy. Taking E as the lowest fare available with no other factors, should E class seats be no longer available, as in your case when you booked online, the next available fare class is automatically shown as available with E class showing as EL (Waitlist) or EC (Waitlist closed). This process occurs continuously as long as there are seats available to sell. When all seats are sold and no more seats are available, each class will show as either L or C at the end.
2. When you were booking online, the most likely thing that happened is you were offered a low price and as seat sales and availability is dynamic and ever changing, (yes even by the second), the price you originally saw was no longer available by the time you tried to complete the booking.
3. As you mentioned, fare levels varied between $440 and $860, this is because as explained certain flights on certain days were experienced a higher demand than others and taking other factors such as time of day, flight duration and connection time in to account, this is most likely why you saw such a vast fare variance.
I hope this has helped you in some way to explain why what happened happened.
rgpnz.
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