Booking flights (Monarch)

[-Moley-]

Trying to book return flights for 4 of us from LGW to Faro in June, and after BA's prices increasing from £1000 to £1800 in the last two weeks I'm back to booking with Monarch.

My wife is under the impression that if you go online to book the flights in the morning they work out cheaper than buying at lunchtime or during the evening..... apparently she read it somewhere or was told by someone.

Does anyone know if it's true, or a load of rubbish?

(I guess I'll find out in the morning myself, although the flights have increased by £120 since I checked at lunchtime)

[insurance_jon]

clear your cookies out of your browser. the sites can tell you are coming back and sometimes increase the price

[-Moley-]

Many thanks.

Unfortunately clearing the cookies and also trying this morning didn't make a difference, so have booked anyway.

[IforB]

Our system doesn't work like, so generally, what you see is what you get. We aren't as sneaky as many other airlines!



(Yet... )

[TVR1]

Luckily for you, June this year has Friday 13th. Travel or return on that date and a result. I did a cheeky weekender to Marrakech with my O/H in December. £18 out. Return £40 each.

[MogulBoy]

-Moley- said:

My wife is under the impression that if you go online to book the flights in the morning they work out cheaper than buying at lunchtime or during the evening.....

The logic behind this is that most airlines will be using demand based pricing models that are sophisticated to a greater or lesser degree. If their goal is to let the first X seats on a particular route/date go at their lowest price for marketing purposes, you might find that the first X people to log on select these cheap seats, effectively making them [at least temporarily] unavailable for anyone else - even though a (high?) percentage of those folk were just 'looking' and end up log off without completing a purchase... When they actually log off, the seats that they had 'reserved' should then appear for the next person who logs on etc.. At busy times you would statistically be are more likely to come across these scenarios but it's only a theory - I'm sure that the crafty buggers have many other ways of maximising their revenues! 20+ years ago, you could get a cheap ticket if you turned up at an airport and joined the standby queue. These days, they don't appear to have to try so hard and the occupancy levels on most flights is far higher than it used to be. It doesn;t appear to pay them to offer cheap last minute deals anymore as we have been sucessfully 'conditioned' to accept that booking early is the only way to have a chance of a 'bargain'.

Edited by MogulBoy on Friday 17th January 12:01