I've seen this happen fairly consistently on very low-demand off-peak flights. I don't think it's a supply/demand thing. The coincidence of the timing a day or two after I search and the consistency of the experience is what makes me think they do it deliberately. The normal price variations I do see too (including with Google flight tracker), but they don't seem to correlate nearly as strongly with my searches. Hard to prove it though...
Re:Technology that changed air travel
by lotsofpulp on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @06:42AM
(#23233399)
If your search causes the price to go to for anyone who searches, them I would still say it isn’t targeting a specific buyer, but just that it’s triggered by a lower level of demand.
I can imagine that a route with 500 available seats won’t be programmed to be sensitive to one search, but a route with 10 seats could be.
I presume the price goes up and down based on aggregate searches or reservations for the flight, i.e. supply and demand. I know for hotels, there are programs crawling and searching for competing hotel’s prices and changing pricing based on that as well as changes in inventory and prior year’s data.