An anonymous reader writes: I pose a question to all of my fellow Slashdot users regarding the pricing algorithm of airfare. Recently I have been looking up airfare for spring break and have become very interested in how this works. I am sure that most of you have looked to buy airfare online through one of the traveling websites such as expedia, travelocity, orbitz or simply directly from the website of the airline. If so, you have probably seen how one day the price of a flight could increase or decrease by over $100, even doubling in price. Further, you will randomly see notes like "only 1 ticket left at this price". I assumed that this was simply based on supply and demand and that the price would only change if people bought a ticket for that flight or if it became closer to the date of travel and there were still many outstanding tickets. However, I am convinced that the algorithm is much more complex than that. Not only do I think that prices change based on the day of the week, but I also think that it has something to do with the amount of queries for a specific flight. If someone continues to check the price of a specific flight or day of travel to a specific location then the price of the tickets will actually increases — maybe not in an hour or in a day — but shortly after. Am I just being extremely paranoid? Or do you guys think that the airfare pricing algorithm takes into account the amount of queries? What else do you guys think effect the price of airfare? Has anyone actually worked on the algorithm (or a particular airline's algorithm) and know first hand what it uses to determine the prices? Looking forward to hearing your opinions.
