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You may have noticed on our “Cheap Airline Ticket Air Travel Deals Blog” that a number of airlines are running “one-day” airfare sales; we even did a post on these short-lived airfare sales a week or so ago. Since then, we’ve seen more of this, including a Northwest Vacations airfare sale that only lasts 20-hours! Clearly, the airlines are up to something. But what? Let me explain. |
One thing you can say for these one-day sales: they generate “buzz” (like me writing about it). And that’s exactly what the airlines want. To get people talking about them, looking at their site, and coming back to it, again and again, on the off-chance that such sales will be repeated.
So it generates some good publicity for the airline, at a minimal cost: few can take advantage of a one-day sale, and fewer still who try to take advantage may find it impossible due to restrictions (some one-day sale limit travel to Tues., Wed., and Thurs. — normally, the cheapest travel days anyway).
For now it seems, airlines are “testing” how well this “one-day airfare sale hype” actually works.
For air passengers, it’s kind of hard to keep up with, what with the necessity of going from site to site, except…you don’t HAVE to do that. Just come (or subscribe to the cheap airfare deals RSS feed) to our “Cheap Airline Ticket Air Travel Deals Blog”, and you’ll see all the information you need, in one handy place.
And of course, always use our Free Airfare Email Alerts.
One of the things that has made Farecompare less valuable than it once was is that so many fares are getting posted without the accompanying fuel surcharges, thereby skewing the results and making them misleading. For an example of this in action, just look at the NW fares on this page:
Northwest Houston Airfare lookup
Most of them simply are not bookable at the prices listed.
There are many fares that pop up on FC that are simply not bookable at the prices listed, because of this problem. It’s been documented on FlyerTalk. It would be nice if some of the tech people here could fix the problem.
Comment by kevin whited — February 20, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
Hi Kevin,
We are working all the time to be as accurate as possible with the information. It is a never ending battle of new surcharges, new fees and packed planes.
The airfares we show come directly from the airlines and are their cheapest published, they decide on a case by case basis, every time you make a query to release seats on a particular flight for their cheapest prices.
We are in the process of a major overhaul of several of our tools … we will continue to strive to help air travelers make the best buying decision.
Cheers,
Rick
Comment by Rick Seaney — February 20, 2008 @ 4:04 pm