How the air fair prices work

Hi Randy,

I think what is happening, is you are pulling a lower price inventory seat when you search, then when you log in, that lower fair is temporarily on hold because you already pulled it form inventory, so you are getting a higher fair.

Every night, United's Inventory Management System changes the number of seats available in each fair class based on demand. They will move some of the higher fares into the lower fair category if they are not selling. The fair codes vary from “Y" being full fair, to so extreme discounts like “W", “S" and “T".
If they bump 2 “Y"s down to an “S" and a “W", and you do a search for the lowest price you will get the “S" fair, this is temporarily pulled form inventory for about 10 minutes. When you log in and search, you get the “W" fair which costs more.

Next time, try it in reverse order and let us know what happens. Also, log in and change your preferences to expert mode. When you search for flights, you can select the flight inventory and see the exact number of seats in each fair class.

You can also use tools like Sabre to see the exact price of each fair class for each particular segment.

So I really don't think they are gouging you, its just the way the flight inventory system works. Let us know what you find out and I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Michael