The Puzzling World of Airfare Pricing aka Dynamic Airfare Pricing

ByJeff Posted on Updated on

As fulltime travelers we spend a lot of time researching airline ticket prices and trust me when I say Airfare is the most mysterious thing to shop for, especially since it probably the most or at least second most expensive part of their travel budget

I totally understand why the airfare pricing would vary based on time of year and day of the week. From the company’s shareholder perspective, It just makes sense to charge more during the times your service is in higher demand. As a consumer and business owner I’ve always thought it was bullsh!t

It’s called ‘Surge pricing’….. <or> ‘dynamic pricing’…. <it’s actually> ‘profiteering’

What I really struggle with, though, is the apparently random variance by ROUTE. 

Flying from Nashville, TN to Panama City, Panama, you can buy a ticket for $158 with one stop in Atlanta, GA.

If I fly directly from Atlanta, GA to Panama City, Panama (PTY) on the same date the cheapest flight is $217. Seriously, though, it’s the same airplane that the people who started in Nashville are on. The seats are somehow more expensive because you aren’t going as far?

Distance means nothing to these people

Flying out of Miami, FL I can get a direct flight for $362. Now, on the map I’m looking at, Miami is significantly closer to Panama than Atlanta is. And, to top that, I can save $100 if I take a flight out of Miami that includes a 14 hour layover in Bogota, Colombia. So I go PAST Panama and then come back for less $$’s ? It’s also cheaper ($162) to fly from Austin, TX to Panama City with a layover in Miami.

Shopping from our nearest international airport wasn’t any more logical. I found Portland, OR to PTY seats as low as $295 depending where the layovers were

Real world experience

Bizarre. Reminds me of a trip I took to Oshkosh many years ago where I flew from Portland, OR to Salt Lake City, UT then to Atlanta, GA, then to Minneapolis-St Paul, MN and then finally to Appleton, WI to save the company a few hundred bucks compared to the direct PDX-MSP-ATW routing. I did a cross-country one time for super cheap but had a layover in Detroit from like 11 pm to 7 am. That was a one and done experience. Not a great airport to be stuck in overnight. At least not back in the early 2000’s.

Something useful

I can offer you one helpful hack I have seen in several places – when shopping for airfare you should use a VPN and clear your cookies regularly. Otherwise the systems increase the prices each time you look at the same route.

I ran some tests on this theory using flights to places we would never go – at least not directly – and was able to watch the prices increase by almost 100% in a few days using 3 of the larger ticket consolidator sites. 

Jeff Mayernik is a fulltime traveler and storyteller, journeying the world fulltime with his wife, Sandra. With a background in electronics, construction, and sales, Jeff tackles challenges with a practical, hands-on approach. As the main writer and photographer for their blog, The Mobile Retiree, he shares budget-friendly travel tips and experiences. When not documenting their adventures or working on his book, Jeff enjoys fixing things, building projects, and indulging in his love of history, fantasy, and sci-fi literature.