Thanks Jeff, comment #7
 
I made the change from travel to shopping (blog) in the intro paragraph.
 
I’ll take a look at the travel blog you posted and comment on it later.

The Washington Post’s travel blog is completely different:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/travellog/

I would be interested in hearing your take on their latest post…who is responsible when a customer ends up with a ticket with a too-short connection time?

Hi Brian, comment #3,
 
As I noted in the early comment about issues with international we have, we can do better on domestic as well.
 
We highlight the cheapest airfares on airlines — and airlines are only willing to relinquish about 10% of the seats on a plane at the cheapest prices and more recently with load factors touching 90% it is likely they may not release even 10% at the cheapest prices (certainly on peak travel days and holidays they won’t).
 
I agree that people get frustrated with shopping for air travel because the system is set up for frustration. In theory each time you make a query for a price — and their are millions of quotes each day - the price can change.
 
Airfares change several times a day. The inventory system at the airlines is keeping track of historical patterns, user shopping behavior among dozens of other variables to decide what price to quote for a particular city pair, for travel on a particular date/time.
 
The key to finding the best deal is to be flexible and to be notified when the airlines are lowering prices so you can be in that select group who gets the best price.
 
We will be having some new tools on alerts that will hopefully keep most people from wasting their time if the price is a) not on the dates they want to travel b) not available which is more complicated because a query at one time can say no seat and next query might say yes (in theory).
 
Again we are working on this diligently, so your patience is appreciated. I can guarantee the airlines and online travel agencies are not making this their highest priority and it is ours.

Hi Miss comment #4,
 
We are working on several new upgrades to the international alert system that I hope to have up by the end of the year. Including the ability to estimate taxes (on the website now) and a star rating system as well.
 
I agree this is an issue (and you bring it up eloquently and forthrightly which is appreciated) and we are working on it.
 
International airfares are very complicated because they have the fare itself, separately filed fuel surcharges (called YQ/YR) and taxes that can vary wildly depending on the route you take and the countries you transit through.
 
Our approach to estimating taxes will use the most common route that might be flown (thus it being an estimate).
 
In general for trans-oceanic flights today there is a built in out the door cost of $100-170 in international taxes and $120-180 fuel surcharges — before the actual airfare gets in the mix.
 
I believe that international travel is going to be the growth area for the next several years and have some excellent pricing (hopefully currency and fuel will change a bit in that time).
 
I hope you will be patient with us as we continue to tweak our technology — we are working on it diligently.

When I read the title of this article, “Im TIRED of Misinformed Travel Experts!”, I got a twinge of anger. I feel I am repeatedly misinformed by FareCompare when sent international flight e-mail alerts. For example, I received an e-mail alert on November 20th notifying me that flights from Washington, DC (all area airports) to Paris (all area airports) were discounted to $360. My peeve is that this price does not include taxes, which are sometimes over $200. Isn’t there a way to include the taxes and fees into the e-mail alerts, so I am not misinformed on the price of a flight?

International airfare feeds occur at 1am, 5:30am, 11am, 3pm and 8pm weekdays — 1:30am 5am, 5pm Saturdays — 5pm 10:30pm Sundays.

They are loaded on reservation systems 4-8 hours after they arrive depending on the system.

When international airfares come in, they are ready for “sale/booking” immediately unless the rules of the fare (sales restrictions) modify the “first reservation/sale” date, which can occur, but is rarely ever set, because it would just make more sense to file the airfare on that future date.

What you are referencing is a common practice to set the “travel effective” date to the next day (not same day), which just means the airfare can be sold immediately but the first departure must be on or after the next day — same day departure is rarely allowed anyway because of advance purchase and seasonal rule requirements of most international airfares.

To clarify a possible point of confusion — both the 8pm international and domestic airfare feeds are not loaded by most reservation systems until after midnight (Amadeus is not as beholding to the Eastern Midnight issue) — all other airfare feeds are loaded and bookable the same day.

Bottom line is you can buy travel on an international airfare the same day it comes in — as long as your itinerary is validated by the rules — this means international fare prices can (and do) change up to 5 times a day — not once.

A. International fares change 5-times a day, not once.

Unless things have changed since my pricing days, you both are right. International fares do change 5 times a day, but the effective date for those fares is always the following day. So, even though fare changes will come through on FareCompare five times, you won’t actually be able to book them until the next day.