When it comes to scoring the best airfare prices, everyone seems to have a trick.
Some spend hours flipping between the tabs of different flight aggregator sites while others swear by booking on a Sunday and traveling on a Tuesday or Wednesday.
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Another popular "hack" is to book the cheapest option one finds and then try to change it to the time you actually want to travel.
American Airlines Cracks Down On Traveler 'Fare Shopping'
While low-cost airlines have always charged extra for even the slightest alteration, full-price carriers usually allow such changes provided you book the regular price -- rather than the cheapest economy option.
American Airlines (AAL) became the latest airline to crack down on this by explicitly writing rules against "automated re-shopping" into its fare booking policy.
"We updated our governing travel agency agreements that included a provision that prohibits the practice of automated reshopping," American Airlines confirmed to the Points Guy, an airline and travel website that was the first to report the change. "With that change, we updated our Conditions of Carriage to be consistent with the GTAA."
While the policy frames it primarily as a way to fight against the "use of a robotic or automated process of re-booking a ticket for the same passenger and itinerary on American with the purpose of taking advantage of a reduced fare," the change will affect anyone who has ever grabbed the cheapest fare they saw and changed it later.
Locking in a price then working out a specific travel date and time became particularly common when most major airlines waived change fees amid the global covid-19 pandemic. Many of the pandemic rules lasted well into 2021 and even the end of 2022.
As Post-Pandemic Travel Bounces Back, So Do Change Fees
But as many of the travel restrictions were lifted and nations opened up their borders, airlines slowly and quietly brought back those dreaded change fees. While they are typically waived for business class travelers, economy fare booking changes will begin at $75 and can go upwards of $300.
According to American Airlines, the crackdown came after seeing some people take advantage of "rebooking" by enlisting agents or other third parties to be constantly scouring for the lowest possible fare and rebooking as soon as it emerged.
Unlike retail or food prices, the cost of airfare has long been volatile and mired in mystery; while booking early is generally cheaper than waiting until the last minute, airlines are constantly adjusting their prices depending on everything from the cost of jet fuel to how full the airplane gets and what other airlines are doing.
"The way airlines price their seats is a complete jungle and there's no secret formula to that," Birgir Jonsson, the chief executive of the newly-launched Icelandic low-cost carrier Play, told TheStreet in an exclusive January 2023 interview. "It's an absolutely dynamic environment and especially now with the introduction of artificial intelligence and bots where everyone's always monitoring everybody else."
While it was most likely due to a coding error, the CTO of IT consulting firm Cognizant was recently told that rebooking a flight from Seattle to Florida from the morning to the evening would cost $2,147,483,647.
