So i am getting ready for an upcoming trip and occasionally check several different websites for ticket prices. I always check in incognito (i have seen in the past that if i dont they can just jack up prices if i search for the same flight to often). some days of the week the ticket is in the middle, some days it is roughly 100-200 cheaper than before, and then on other days still it goes up 100-200 from “normal”. what makes websites and companies have like a $400 difference in price just based on what day of the week it is? is it based on projections of future costs? is it based on when they think more people are shopping for tickets? days that people typically buy more tickets?
In: Economics
Airlines have two goals:
* Keep a very consistent flight schedule.
* Have every plane as close to full as possible.
But people, of course, would prefer to travel at different times. So airlines make high-demand times more expensive and low-demand ones less expensive to encourage people to fill up slots in planes at times they find hard to sell out. But demand can change a lot from one day to the next, as a group buys (or doesn’t buy) tickets on one plane or another.
Because of differing supply and demand.
Vacation travelers are not willing to pay a high price for a ticket, but business travelers are. So to maximize revenue, airline pricing attempts to determine how much of a flight is carrying business travel and how much is carrying personal travel, and price it accordingly.
And of course there are lesser factors that still have an influence, such as selling some seats of a flight at lower cost if no one is buying it at higher cost but the flight still needs to be flown instead of canceled.
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