Boldly Go Solo

Travel Guru Chris Elliott recently wrote a piece about the rumor that airlines plant cookies on your computer to track your activities on their site, so they can "bait and switch" on fare prices.

This news, which I've heard before, comes just as I'm trying to price a flight to Atlanta for June. I've already looked at some major sites, such as Kayak, Expedia and Farespotter, so they "know," according to this theory, that I'm interested in going to Atlanta.

They might show me cheap fares until I'm ready to buy and then when I actually choose to book, I might get a message that that fare is no longer available. According to the theory.

Since I've suspected this does indeed happen, I've decided to try to fight back.

On firefox, I went into tools>options>privacy and found that I could tell my computer to not allow cookies for certain sites. Guess whose sites I typed in? Guess what happened? The site won't work without cookies! (Sorry if this is a bit advanced technology wise for some of you.)

So I clicked a different option that says, "allow for session." Now, folks, I have NO idea whether this will, in general, change how the pricing works.

But interestingly, after clearing the cookies for those sites yesterday, prices this morning were $20 cheaper than when I first started looking. This does NOT an example make. The prices could have dropped on their own. But strange, huh?

Anyway, the deal is booked. And I'm happy with the price, considering I expected it to be at least $20 higher, which is what it was when I was looking last week – before I cleared my computer's cookies. (Since I assumed that the airline sites were spying on my every move.)

Does anyone have Internet airline fare price changes to share? Suspicions? Proof??

Photo: Ellen Perlman. Nashville airport.