Do airlines use cookies to increase prices for flights?
We checked flights from five budget airlines throughout the day to see if the prices changed and by how much. Then we cleared our cookies
BOOKING flights can feel like a total rip off. You look up the price to prepare a budget only to come back to them later and they've gone up £50.
It doesn't matter who you book your flights with it always feels like a mad rush to get them as soon as you see them before they become too expensive.
We thought we'd cracked the code after rumour had it airlines could spy on what we were searching for and hike the price when we searched for them again later.
So to outsmart them we started to cache our internet cookies and search for flights using a different browser - but we haven't really seen a difference.
Plus 86 per cent of Brits don't know when's the best time to bag a bargain on flights, so are they checking up on us? Or are we looking for deals at the wrong time?
To clear up the confusion, we take a look at whether airlines really do hike prices if we search for them more than once - and when's the ideal time to book your flights.
Can clearing your cookies really make a difference?
Third parties can spy on what your searching for using cookies. Far from the chocolate chip kind, they are little bits of data about what you've been searching for online.
Websites have to let you know if they're using cookies, which was made into EU law in 2011.
Companies can use cookies to track what you're doing online and store information like automatically filling in your usernames and passwords - which big companies say is to make the user experience smoother.
In theory, this means airlines could be spying on what flights you've been looking and when you come back to them later. That's when they could push up prices.
Back in 2013, blogger reckoned he had them sussed. When he searched for flights from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, he found that the $159 round-trip had jumped to $189 24 hours later.
When he switched browsers, the American Airline flights were back to the original price.
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Tom Church from explained: "Airlines do use cookies but probably not to raise prices. When you visit Ryanair, easyJet or a flight comparison site such as SkyScanner, all use cookies to store information about you.
"But so far, there's no evidence that it is the cookies which causes prices to rise.
"That's not to say prices don't rise. They do, and it's very frustrating. For example, I found flights earlier this week from London to Bremen, Germany for £2.99 each way on Ryanair.
"I checked again the next day and they had climbed to £79.55. That's 26 times more expensive for the same seat on the same flight."
We put it to the test and found... that it doesn't make a difference
We checked the prices of three different flights with five budget airlines regularly throughout the day to see if the price changed.
We used Google Chrome to check flights during the Easter holidays with Ryanair, Easy Jet, Norwegian, FlyBe and Jet2, four times between 8:30am and 5:30pm on January.
Every time we checked, the prices seemed to stay the same, apart from one exception.
One flight from Ryanair - from London Stanstead to Faro dropped in price over the course of four hours from £142.79 to £121.37.
But the return flight jumped in price from £38.75 to £44.87, making the overall round trip £15.30 cheaper.
We even looked at flights flying from different UK airports to see if that made a difference, which disappointingly it didn't.
After we cached our cookies the prices didn't drop either. It wasn't the dramatic money saving hack we'd hoped for.
So why do flight prices change so often?
Okay, so our investigation didn't bring up any drastic price differences but that doesn't mean that doesn't happen.
Airlines change their prices depending on how many seats are available and how popular the route is.
While flight comparison websites regularly scrape the web to find the latest prices. But different sites use different algorithms so the prices might be different depending on the tool you use.
For example, Skyscanner might update their prices four times a day, whilst Kayak updates them six times a day.
How to save when booking flights
CLEARING your cookies and using a different browser might not get you a cheaper deal on your flights, but these tips will help:
Fly on a Tuesday or a Wednesday - These days are less popular to travel on so the flights are often cheaper.
Book on a Tuesday morning - Many airlines launch their discount promotions on Monday evenings so you're more likely to get the best deals on a Tuesday morning.
Don't book on Thursdays - This is because airlines tend to add mark ups to the prices because that's when people typically prefer to search.
Don't travel on a weekend - These are the most popular days to travel so airlines bump up the prices for these tickets.
Book one way tickets - Buying two one-way tickets can sometimes be cheaper than a return ticket.
Set up price alerts - If you know where you want to go, you can set up price alerts via comparison sites which will let you know when the price drops.
Be open minded - If you're not sure where to go, type “Everywhere” as your destination in to find the cheapest flights on offer all around the world.
So if you try to book a seat last minute, you might end up forking out big money because there are less available.
But then on the flip side, if an airline is struggling to fill a plane they might sell seats cheap to help cover the costs of flying the jet half full.
Flight prices can also change in real time, so it doesn't mean that the lowest fare will always be the lowest available.
"Airlines use other tricks to entice you to pay more," explained Tom. "For example, 'Only 5 Seats Left!' is very common. You freak that you're about to miss out.
"The smelly myth that flight tickets get more expensive because of cookies seems to be more pungent around online travel agents.
"They skim a commission on top of the price of the ticket, so it may be that commission which increase in cost, rather than the flight itself. Again, if in doubt, turn off the cookies!"
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