Why do airlines change flight prices?

Question

I have been checking for a flight to the U.K. from Turkey for over two weeks checking every day on travel websites and airlines. I finally booked my flight after the price had not gone any cheaper and sometimes the price had risen on the same flight.

I looked on Sunday exactly the same flight was cheaper and now it has changed again today to the same price I paid, why does this happen? do you think the airlines try to sell all the seats and sometimes they are not filled so they offer them at a smaller price and then put the price back up when more people are interested? they must have a database checking peoples enquiries

Answer 1

I doubt that they raised then simply because YOU keep checking, if that it what you mean.  But price is set by supply and demand. As the seats fill up, the prices go up.

Answer 2

I used to work for an airline.  Here's how it generally works:

If there are, for instance, 200 seats on the flight, they say they'll sell the first __ seats for $___, the next __ seats for $___, the next __ seats for $___, etc. so as the flight gets fuller and fuller, the ticket prices will increase.  The purpose for this is to make more money off of business travelers (who usually book at the last minute) than off of vacationers (who usually book way in advance), since people's employers usually foot the bill for business travel, and companies have deeper pockets than individuals.

However, the lower "fare buckets" (that's the term for what I described above) generally have more restrictions than the higher ones, such as no refunds, have to stay over a Saturday night, etc.

If you saw the price go down for the same flight on the same day, then a couple things could have happened:

1) The airline just decided to have a sale

2) Someone had the last seats in a particular fare bucket "on hold" (then you looked and saw higher price), that person decided not to buy them (then you looked again and saw lower price since you were looking at the seats they just released), then someone else bought tickets on that flight, thus re-filling that fare bucket (and then you looked again and saw the higher price again).  Generally if you are using the airline's website and select a flight, they will put your seats on hold for 15 minutes, to allow you time to enter your frequent flyer number, enter your credit card number, etc. but then release them if you don't buy them.  Or, at some airlines, you can request to put tickets on hold for 24 hours.