[cscheirer]

DELTA!!!!!!This is unbelievable! Whether online booking or phone booking this problem is the same. Price changes literally by the hour..or minute! When trying to book during registration, agent or online message comes on and says/states that while booking there has been a price increase! Literally within seconds this happens. My family is trying to book one ticket to Cancun with Delta, the rest of us have our flights booked with Delta, but we have another passenger. Within the past two weeks the prices have wavered between $440 and $860! Customer Service at Delta or customer service at any website (ex. Expedia, Travelocity, etc) offers no help. They say "keep looking", "prices aren't coming down", "there's nothing we can do", "try 4:00 am", "all cheap flights are gone"...it's never ending! So they may miss out on a purchase and we may just go with another airline. We are beyond frustrated at this point...just wish there was a happy medium!!!:

[rgpnz]

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.

[cscheirer]

Thank you rgpnz:

4 other questions:

1. Can or does the airline/online booking agent track searches? Which would give them the idea of what you are looking for, therefore raise the price?

2. How can I tell the fare level? Delta specifically?

3. Does the fare level mean that the price would not be coming down?

and 4. Does booking early always guarantee the lowest possible fare?

[rgpnz]

Hi!

In reply to your questions.

1. No it would be impossible for a airline the size of Delta to be able to track web users searches unless a user signed in (such as occurs in Expedia for example) with their Frequent flyer info (as in Emirates.com) and even this is remote possibility given the number of users who use the website on a daily basis.

2. There is a way to know the fare, when booking online as i just did on the DL website in advanced search it allows you to select the fare level starting with E and going up all the way to Y in economy and again when you select your flights and want to confirm as you see on the screenshot you can see the fare class that was booked.




3. The fare level that is showing is the most current available fare and that does not mean that it cannot fluctuate as bookings get cancelled and more cheaper options become available or wont go up as the cheaper seats become full.


4. Yes, generally booking well in advance of the date of travel will assure you of a good price but this is always dependant on other factors such as availability.


Hope this has helped.


rgpnz.