Airplane-ticket prices are crazy. (Or, "Adventures in Web scraping.")

I've flown a lot since I entered college, since my parents haven't been eager to drive ten hours each way several times a year. As a freshman, I noticed that although Continental Airlines was consistently offered lower prices for my route than other airlines, the individual ticket prices changed unpredictably, sometimes dramatically, over time. I wrote a program to scrape ticket prices off the Continental website each day and report to me when they change. The program's saved me at least $500 by now, but it's shed little light on the rules by which ticket prices are calculated. Weirder yet, I've found a case where you can pay less by asking for more: as of the time of this writing, a one-way trip from Newark to Pittsburgh on August 24 is $477, but add a return flight on October 8 and the price is $274 for the round trip.

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Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

I hear, now I'm not sure, but I have heard this from a few sources, that airline places know when you have returned to look at their prices on certain flights, and as the days dwindle and you look more and more frequently, the prices go up. This myth could be confirmed or busted first-hand by anyone willing to do this, and then having someone else unrelated check the price of the exact same flight on a separate computer.
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Prices don't increase monotonically.

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/3756/ticketpricechart.png

In any case, my program doesn't save cookies between sessions, and my IP address isn't stable, so Continental has no way to tell that all of my queries came from the same person. So actually I guess I haven't tested your hypothesis very strongly.

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Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

Don't ask me why, but one way is never cheaper than two way. It's one of those things. Like hot dog buns and hot dogs or whatever.
Also I feel that $274 round trip for Newark to Pittsburgh is you being robbed. It shouldn't be more than $200.
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x is an irrational number if and only if the set { nx mod 1 | n is a natural number } is dense in [0,1].

One-way flights involve somewhat more work because they have to be coordinated with different one-way flights, whereas round trips are symmetrical and easier. But I can't see how that would be a difference worth $200!

The other thing that's completely arbitrary is airport tax. I remember when I was trying to get a round-trip flight from Singapore to South Korea, and the price differentials that I found among various companies and airlines was in the hundreds of dollars. But once the "taxes" were added and the final price came out, all the prices ended up in a $20 range between highest and lowest, wtf.
It's all just one big airline cabal.
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x is an irrational number if and only if the set { nx mod 1 | n is a natural number } is dense in [0,1].

From: UtarEmpire | Posted: 8/6/2010 7:15:09 AM | #004

It shouldn't be more than $200.

Yeah, my goal for that route is under $200, though I'm occasionally able to pay around $125. This time around, Pittsburgh-Newark tickets for flights on August 24 and October 9, which would've worked but would've been a little worse for me, cost $172 for a few days. I held out, hoping I'd see a similar drop in the tickets I wanted, but it didn't come. I ended up paying $255.40 including taxes and fees (which are consistently around $25 for me).

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Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

Generally speaking, if you're willing to risk it, a ticket can often be purchased last minute very cheap. One way especially.

I've gotten $300 dollar trips down under $200 by waiting until the day before or even day of to buy a $70 ticket. Empty seats are just wasted money for airlines.

That would seem to disprove Mark's rumor as well.
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Joe Plumber and Bob the Builder for President in 2012!
America: Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!

Perhaps last-minute seats are cheaper, I can agree with that. And again, I don't have evidence to confirm the rumor is even true. I'd sure like it to be busted for me, because I don't want it to be true! But it goes along the same line as this: when you search or certain things, you will find you get more advertisements on certain websites that are geared towards those things you've searched. It's tricky advertising work, but my girlfriend Kelsey is an ad major, and she and her friend corroborate this same story.

From there, it's not too much of a jump to imagine airlines might play the same sort of sly game.
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