Is it more expensive to buy airline tickets together than separate?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 5 Aug, 2023
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I beg to differ. I truly believe the servers at airlines, trains, even buses, have algorithms that follow your IP address and your search patterns. They also see if you are checking the same flight, so they increase the price on each search, to make you panic. (This should be illegal, but it is not). I militantly check flight prices and found when I see 2 tickets at a higher price do the following:
1) Shut Down and restart the machine.
2) Shut your modem for 2 minutes so a new IP is issued
3) In your browser: Clear all cookies, clear all scripts. Clear all cache.
4) Now search for 1 TICKET (The lower price) – BUY IT. Make sure you make no mistakes.
5) Then try to purchase a second ticket. 8 times out of ten their systems recognize you are trying now to buy a second ticket, so they try to jack you for the higher price. If the price is higher…..start with #1-#5 again.
If the price is still high. Wait a day and buy the second ticket. Its long enough to clear their systems, and you are seen to the computer as a new buyer. I’ve saved thousands of dollars this way.
In general you shouldn’t see what you’re seeing here – especially for multiple dates, which makes me think that it’s possibly either a website error, or a scam of some form.
Airlines do have multiple prices for each flight, and a limited number of seats available in each class. ie, one specific flight might have 5 seats available for $100, another 10 seats for $200, another 10 for $400, and the remaining seats for $600. The earlier you book, the better your chances of getting the lower fares. Over time they may change the number of seats in each class – such as if the flight has a lot of free seats and they aren’t selling at the top prices they might move them back down to the lower levels.*
If it happens that there’s exactly 1 seat left at a particular price, and you try and buy 2 seats, most travel websites will bump BOTH tickets up to the higher price. So based on what you’re seeing it’s possible that there’s only 1 seat left at $350, and trying to get 2 bumps you up to the $600 price. However the odds of that being the case on multiple dates is low.
In general the cheapest place to buy airfares within the US is the airline itself. If you check there do you see the same low price you’re seeing on despegar.com?
*This is an oversimplification of how things actually work, but it’s close enough for you to get the idea. Google for airline inventory management for more details.
Short answer: Sometimes. See this video explainer.
Long answer: it depends on a LOT of factors – the airline, their policy, whether it’s over international or continental borders, whether you’re using an agency or website that has access to certain TYPES of tickets (even in economy class there are several categories that they sell). It’s frustrating.
When I’m searching, I open up three windows on Beat That Flight and start searching as such:
- Return flights from A to B, using flexible search
- One way flights from A to B, using flexible search
- One way flights back from B to A, using flexible search
and then compare and contrast the results to see what benefits I get.
If it’s long-haul, I’ll sometimes expand to 6 or 9 windows, and use different intermediate points, eg from London to Auckland, I could try searching flights starting in London and ending in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Dubai or Singapore, and then flights from those to Auckland.
Messy, isn’t it? 😉 But I’ve saved sooo much using this strategy.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘