ELi5 Why do the plane ticket prices differ so much from day to day?
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Dynamic pricing. Cheap in advance getting more expensive as the departure approaches. And vary between depending upon what seats they have left e.g. you pay for luggage et al.
This method was pioneered by Easy Jet in the UK decades ago. Now all travel tickets follow this pricing model. Book early. cheap price. Not refundable.
This reversed the previous, somewhat silly, method of cheaper as departure approached. Companies prefer to have your money now.
The closer the time to departure gets more expensive because you are paying more because you MUST get that flight/train. Also factor in business paying for the ticket where cost doesn’t matter.
In order to maximize revenue and profit, the airline could just fill the plane with full price passengers. But not everybody is willing to pay full price. They could fill the plane with discount passengers, but then wouldn’t make as much money, or even lose money.
So different tickets have different rules. Some are fully refundable. Some require one or two weeks advance purchase, for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fare_basis_code
https://simpleflying.com/changing-flight-prices-guide/
https://www.cheapair.com/blog/air-fares-101-why-do-airfares-change-all-the-time/
https://simpleflying.com/how-airline-ticket-pricing-works/
If a company needs someone to travel ASAP they’re willing to spend more to send them there vs a family going on vacation. (Some airlines also have bereavement/sympathy fares for people who need to travel short notice due to family death or imminent death.)
Because demand also differs from day to day.
Yes, for large variations in demand it’s possible to do things like offer fewer flights or use smaller aircraft (assuming the airline has that aircraft in its fleet).
But those can only roughly change the amount of seats supplied. The way to fine tune the amount of demand to try to meet the amount of supply, as close as possible, is to charge different prices.
As well as all the other tricks that airlines use to try to determine who is willing to pay more (i.e. business travel usually pays more, and they often buy last minute, plus they don’t really buy very far in advance, plus they don’t usually stay on a weekend).
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