Quote:
Originally Posted by Jetliner
This can happen on any airline. It's possible that if there was one or two seats left that someone was pricing it out at the time. What happens is, when you ask for a fare, they look up the flights, and have to "grab" the seat in order to get the price. It's just like when you are looking up fares on line, you select the flights you want and get the flight. While you have those flights selected, you are holding those seat from inventory.
As for this case, I can tell you for a fact that the agent did not do this. It would take a lot of technical explanations of their computer system, which is the same system used by a few other airlines, but the important part is when the res agent looks up the flights, they only see the lowest fare unless they do a whole LOT of digging. The airport side is a bit different.
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Actually, most online booking engines don't grab the seat out of inventory they simply take a "snapshot" of the availability from the GDS and display the flight options and fares. It's only when the user actually goes to purchase that itinerary that the seat is actually taken out of inventory. Sometimes you will see this when you shop online and get a message that "while you were shopping, availability and price has changed." It happens all the time, especially on Delta's website. I've noticed that sometimes when there is one seat left in a fare bucket DL.com will default to the next higher fare bucket. You actually have to call to get the lower priced ticket but then pay a fee to book it by phone. Robbery!