posted 18 years ago
Air Fares are generally controlled by pricing engines -- in most cases, made by a company called "Manugistics".
These pricing engines generally do a good -- albeit interesting -- job a generating prices. The prices are generated based on seating availablity, day of the week analysis, annual analysis (holidays), time of flight, time to spoilage, etc.
You may not agree with the prices you get, but the pricing engine's job is not to get you the best price, it is to get the best price for the airline, while being able to actually fill the flight. It is true that the high price will turn off certain travellers, but remember, they only need to fill the flight.
As for the future, there is some movement, in adapting pricing engines for Hotel Rooms and Car Rentals.
Henry