How I "tricked" the airlines and you can, too!

Photo, Alaska Airlines

For a long time my very smart daughter-in-law (a Department of Defense engineer who repairs submarines) and I have surmised that airlines' algorithms track your online presence when trying to buy tickets.

Now, I have proof that it happens.

When I tried to book a ticket to Sitka, Alaska, the best, the cheapest ticket disappeared the day after I decided to "sleep on" the potential purchase. 

Gone, ticket!  

The airline supposedly snatched the ticket, trying to force me into buying a more expensive one.

I tried at work that next morning to find the cheaper ticket, suspecting the tricky airline was up to no good, at least, to my "no good," and it was true. It was up to its "own good," certainly not mine.

Still, no cheap ticket to be found. Not even on  the office computer.

So, they knew who I was and what I wanted.

I decided to wait a couple of days and find that bloomin' ticket on a public computer where the airline couldn't track me, or so I thought, and it worked!  

On the public library's computer, I zoomed around different months and inserted different days and times, all the while knowing exactly which month, day, time I wanted.  I put in different cities to screw up those algorithms the best I could. 


By golly, ten minutes before the clock struck midnight (or 6 p.m. in public library parlance), I zoomed into the ticket time I wanted, and guess what.  There it was!  The cheap flight, the time, everything!  I bought that confounded ticket and rapidly found a cheap (relatively speaking) return flight which I seized.

It took some time and effort, but I saved several hundred buckS! And so can you.

Take that, algorithms! And happier traveling, everybody!