Thanksgiving pricing is greedy and crazy

[mberron]

Ok, what is the deal with pricing? I check one day and a return flight is $182. I check the next day and it's $299. Then about 2 hours later it is $320.

Obviously you are using an algorithm to generate highest possible price based on demand. But this is ridiculous! I can tell it adjusts prices based on my searches as well. In the morning I check the flight and it's $229, then I put in my Rapid Rewards number, and it recalculates and the price is $299! This is for Thanksgiving, at least 5 months away. And you are playing with the price already.

Keep the price the same for a period of time. Don't let greed get in the way of customer satisfaction. Oh, and the price for the outbound flight has stayed the same. It's the return flight where you do the gouging.

Thanks but no thanks for Thanksgiving.

[CareforNOLA]

There are a certain number of seats on each flight that are set to be a designated price.  Once the lower price seats sell, the price goes to the next/higher level.  So not every seat on the plane is the same price even if purchased on the same day.  Flights on Sunday after Thanksgiving do sell quickly - busiest travel day of the year...so it could simply be that seats are selling.

Out of curiosity...if you use a different device (such as a friend's computer or a computer at the public library) to randomly check the price and do not log in to your Rapid Rewards account, is the price lower again?  The software for some airlines drop a cookie on your computer when you search a certain flight/date/destination.  If you keep coming back to search again without buying, the system is programmed to think "the potential purchaser is more serious now, so they will be willing to pay more," and each time the same flight is searched, the price increases (yes, they use an algorithm just as you suspected.)   That has not been true in the past history of Southwest, but they just changed their sales/ticketing system software in May, so maybe that has been built in now?  Of course, testing this theory for a flight on the busiest travel day of the year means the results might not be accurate.

You could also try a different return date if saving the money is critical.

Good luck, and I hope you can work out your Thanksgiving plans.

[mberron]

I think Southwest does use the cookie in an algorithm to guage demand. Understood this is a high demand time, but seems a bit malicious, no underhanded. We always pay to get the Early Bird so we pay more now anyway. Even with that, have been in B boarding a few times.

Ok, thanks. I ended up buying with the higher price. Like I said, the outbound trip was still the same and always the one way was available, while the 1 stops were all booked up. Don't understand that, except that many people were probably boarding from Raleigh, etc. Our flight is from Baltimore.