Lost your password?

So you’re booking airline tickets for your family of four from Boston to Minneapolis and go looking for the best deal. The novice traveler will immediately go to their favorite website, input the origin & destination, choose “four passengers” and then book their tickets. And by leaving out one essential step, they may have just cost themselves hundreds of dollars. Today we discuss the often misunderstand topic of fare bucket pricing.

By going straight to four people when booking airline tickets, you may have unintentionally failed to take advantage of one of the airline industry’s idiosyncrasies: fare bucket pricing.

Booking Airline Tickets – The Fare Bucket

It Doesn’t Matter How Many Passengers Are In Your Group: Check The Fare For One Person

By going straight to four people (or however many people are in your party) when booking airline tickets, you may have unintentionally failed to take advantage of one of the airline industry’s idiosyncrasies: fare bucket pricing.

Airlines don’t sell all the tickets on a flight for the same price, of course. Rather, they sort fares into categories, or buckets. Once the tickets in the cheapest buckets are sold out, the airline moves up to the next bucket.

What if there are only three tickets at the lowest price?

But what happens if there are only three tickets available in the lowest bucket and you need four? The airline could, of course, give you the three tickets at the lower price and charge the higher price for just the fourth. But they won’t. Instead, they’ll try to sell you all four at the higher price!

For example, when I tried to book four tickets for Boston to Minneapolis, I started by asking for the price for just one ticket. Here’s what they showed me after I booked the outbound leg:

fare bucket booking airline tickets Delta

Not bad for a roundtrip flight. But the key to the deal is indicated in red: There are only three tickets available at this price. What would happen, though, if I had asked for four tickets right away? I checked it out, and this is what I saw:

fare bucket booking airline tickets Delta

The price is now $506 per ticket, and that’s for all four tickets! By not getting the three tickets at the lower price, you’re going to pay an extra $54 for each of them, or a total of $162.

Here Are The Steps That You Should Take To Save $162.

So what’s the best way to handle this situation? It’s easy.

  • First, you need to check the fares for one person and then for the total number of people in your party. If they’re the same, go ahead and book them all. (You are looking to determine the lowest fare bucket.)
  • If they’re different, you may have to play with the site a bit to determine how many tickets are available at the lower price. Not all airlines will tell you outright, like Delta does.
  • Book the cheaper tickets and then exit the site. Then, go back in and book the remainder of your tickets at whatever the new “lowest price” is. In our case, we booked three tickets and $452 and then the fourth at $506.
  • And finally, call the airline and ask them to link the two records. This step is optional, but I highly recommend it. That way, if there are any changes to the itinerary, the airline will make sure to keep everyone together.

One last thing: Before you book, check out the cash back shopping portals to see if your airline offers anything back for booking through one. With airlines, it’s usually international brands that offer rebates, but it’s worth a shot. And if you’re booking a hotel, it is very likely that they’ll have a rebate for you.

Further Reading – Points & Miles