Airfare Search

airfare search
Release of UI president search documents ordered
SPRINGFIELD – The University of Illinois can keep secret the names and applications of the recent candidates for UI president but must produce other detailed documents related to the $303,000 search, the Illinois attorney general has ruled. read more
AIRFare Flight Search

how do airfare search engines work?

I am searching for some airfares. But even when I select the same departing and destination airports, the exact same travel dates using different search engines (orbits,kayak, travelocity, cheapoair, etc.) and search at the same time (give or take a few mins), I get very different fare quotes? Any idea why? How do these search engines work?.

Airfares are maybe the most complex system invented by man. There are so many parameters involved and the system is in a constant state of flux.

Let’s take an example, a flight that has 300 seats:

First of all, the seats are divided into booking classes, usually a character like: A, F, J, C, D, E, M, Q, P and many more. In economy class there can be many different fare classes. So it can end up with:

A: 2 seats (First class discounted)
F: 10 seats (First class normal)
J: 30 seats (Business class normal)
G: 20 seats (Business class discounted)

And in economy there can be maybe 10 different fare classes.

To complicate things, airlines frequently change seats between fare classes. This is usually automated and done by computers. This is depending on sales but also a simple thing as quoting a flight may alter fare classes.

I read an article, about Ryanair I think. It said that if many passengers quote a charge on a specific flight, that alone may increase the fare as the airline sees the increase in demand.

The system used of course varies between airlines but it’s not a simple system and I doubt that anyone but the actual airline “bean counters” know how it works