HOW You Type Your Flight into US Airways’s Website Changes the Price

Jeanne Marie Hoffman September 30, 2014 US Airways 1 Comment

Lately, I’ve felt a little crazy when booking flights. Â I felt like prices were going up then going back down during the booking process. Â I always finally got the fare I wanted, so I didn’t think too much about it.

Then today I figured out what was going on.

Flights price differently based on what airport you type into the “To” and “From” boxes. Â You are probably thinking, “Duh, Jeanne. Â If you are going to different places, they will price differently”.

But hear me out.

I tried this out a bunch of times and about half the time it happened.

If you type in a co-airport and click search nearby airports, you can get a different fare than searching for just the airport itself.

Here’s an example. Â I was searching for a flight out of BWI. Â This was the fare I got when searchingÂ out of BWI for the BWI airport:

Then I searched out of DCA, clicked to check the surrounding airports, and got a different result:

I kept switching back and forth and the price kept changing back and forth. Â I opened a Google Incognito window and searched for them in the opposite order and got the same results for each.

The stranger part is, I eventually tried calling up to book. Â My fare ended up being about $20 less than either of the round-trips were coming up on the website.

I’ve also been able to getÂ a round-trip flight to priceÂ less by typing in the connections separately as a multi-city trip in the past. Â I haven’t seen this in a while, but it increases my confusion over using US Airways’ website.

These aren’t the only issues.

There are MAJOR issues with rebooking weather affected flights through the website.

Another issue to watch out for:

Sometimes flights get more expensive right before I type in my credit card information.

When booking flights, I’d try playing around with co-airports first, just to see how the pricing comes up.