> How is it that we were able to land a man on the moon over 45 years ago and we still can't just type in a search engine and get the cheapest flights from point A to point B on certain dates?
Because the airlines have their own army of geniuses working very hard to make sure that this is difficult to do:
Who are you? How much money do you have? How badly do you want these tickets? How often are you checking the price, what else have you bought? How are your buying habits compared to everyone else's? These are the questions the airlines are trying to answer in order to maximise how much money they can get off each individual.
Wow. So as a United "elite" member, just doing searches on their app or site but with my account, is gonna cost me? Because I've never seen this happen. I seem to get the lowest fare they have. I've not done serious tests, just seen when other people look up my flights, on say, Kayak, they get the same prices.
Try browsing for tickets with and without private browsing enabled, and from different geographic IP addresses, from different computers, and different websites (cheapair, Expedia, Orbitz...). You should definitely see a fluctuation in prices, for the same seats. I always do.
It may well be that elite members get lower prices, as this may be the way for the airline to maximise their profit off you. Their algorithms are quite inscrutable, intentionally so.
Because the airlines have their own army of geniuses working very hard to make sure that this is difficult to do:
http://www.cheapair.com/blog/travel-tips/air-fares-101-why-d...
Who are you? How much money do you have? How badly do you want these tickets? How often are you checking the price, what else have you bought? How are your buying habits compared to everyone else's? These are the questions the airlines are trying to answer in order to maximise how much money they can get off each individual.