=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2003/08= /31/TR233784.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, August 31, 2003 (SF Chronicle) No rhyme or reason to airfare variations/Costs vary by when and how ticket = bought Anne Miller, Albany Times Union Take a seat on an airplane. Aisle seat 2A, for example, or maybe 29B. Same worn seat cushions, same scratched armrests, same in-flight magazin= es in the pocket of the seat-back in front. Completely different price tags. One seat may, according to the mysteries of airline pricing, be worth $1= 00 less than the seat next to it or $150 more than the one behind. "It's kind of crazy, you never know," said Bob Livingston, traveling one weekend back home to San Antonio from Albany, N.Y., his girlfriend and three boys in tow. An unscientific survey (me and my notebook, up and down the aisles) of t= wo recent flights to and from Albany International Airport via Continental Airlines revealed that no two seats on a commercial jet are equal, at least not in terms of money. Distance did not matter -- a 2,000-mile itinerary might cost little more than a journey a few states away. The most costly tickets came from the industry leaders; the cheapest from an online auction site. The differences highlighted the fact that travel is based on supply and demand, with Web-savvy travelers reaping far bigger benefits than those who rely on the old tried-and-not-so-true methods. Some experts also call the system the airlines use to determine prices -- which take into account the Internet, travel agents, times of day, times of year and empty seats -- horribly outdated. "Across the board, the airline industry is really confusing like that," said Amy Bohutinsky, a spokeswoman for Hotwire.com, an online travel company. Airline pricing is a long, complicated process that works best when passengers are flexible, said Continental Airlines representative Julie King. "It's all about managing inventory and supply and demand." Bob Lancaster, senior director of pricing for Continental, compared tick= et pricing to appliance shopping. "You just look at that like any product," he said. "You go buy a TV one week at $300, and four weeks later it's $500." He said the Web has helped the industry, cutting out the middle man -- t= he travel agent -- in many instances. So many factors affect pricing that one price will never fit all, Bohutinsky said. To illustrate the point, I questioned fellow travelers as I jetted to San Antonio for a four-day vacation. I flew south on Saturday, July 19, and returned Tuesday, July 22. Looking for a cheap flight, I bought my ticket in June at Hotwire.com. It's a great service if you don't have a definite schedule to follow or any preferences about airline. Hotwire allows customers to search for deals on specific dates. The Web site shows the cheapest fare for the days and airports requested but does not reveal departure times, the airline or the connecting airports until the purchase is complete. The traveler has two hours in which to buy the ticket, and if not, must wait 48 hours before trying the same search again. I spent a few days checking fares on the airline Web sites and other travel sites such as Travelocity (travelocity.com) and Orbitz (www.orbitz.com) before turning to Hotwire. The latter offered me a fare of $223, round-trip, including taxes -- between $100 and $200 less than tickets offered elsewhere. Fingers crossed, I typed in my credit card numbers. I feared snagging a flight that left late Saturday and returned early Tuesday, giving me little time to see friends in south Texas. I got lucky. The online-auction travel gods blessed me with a Continental flight that left at 6:30 a.m. Saturday and landed in Texas at noon, via Cleveland. My return trip departed at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday landed at 9:30 p.m. in Albany, via Newark, N.J. I had plenty of time to spend with friends and accommodate any potential delays on Tuesday night, since I had to work early Wednesday morning. On the Cleveland-bound flight, my fellow travelers included a profession= al saxophone player, who declined to give his name. He was headed home to Ohio after a conference at Skidmore College. He paid $160, not including taxes, on Travelocity around the beginning of March, for the round-trip. A student couple, Maria Fusco, from Grafton, N.Y., and Eric Johnson, from New Paltz, N.Y., bought two tickets to Cleveland in early July on Orbitz for $395, without taxes. Their individual tickets cost about what I paid to travel 1,300 miles more. Harry and Debbie Stoops, an accountant and a clerk, paid $750 for both tickets to Denver in late April. Karen Cleary and her 3-year-old-son Evan were headed home to Texas after= a weeklong visit with her sister in New Paltz, N.Y. Her ticket from Albany to Austin, via Hotwire, cost $236 in late June. She lamented, though, having to wake up at 3 a.m. with a toddler to drive more than an hour to the airport to catch her early flight. She found a cheaper flight on Southwest after she had already bought on Hotwire. "We didn't time it so well," she said, adding that she would use Hotwire again only if the savings were sizable. Bob Livingston paid $350 per ticket for each member of his entourage on Expedia about a month before the flight -- more than $100 per ticket above what I paid -- after spending several days searching for prices on Web sites. Livingston, who manages a car dealership in San Antonio, asked what othe= rs on the flight had paid and joked about getting fleeced. "I found them anywhere from $350 to $600-something on a couple of airlines, " he said. He remained philosophical, though. "As long as they get us there in one piece, it's worth it," he said.=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2003 SF Chronicle