Hello, I blog!

Never did realize that making bookings for budget airline travel can be like … dabbling in the stock market.

The prices fluctuate like woah.

Recently, I witnessed first hand how a friend was practically on the edge of his seat as he constantly made calls to the airline’s hotline – and reporting how the airfare for the same particular flight was leaping by tens every twenty minutes or so.

He made a booking for a flight to Kuala Lumpur in the afternoon at the cost of only … about $40-50 SGD.

This evening, he proceeded to check the price again (supposedly to add me into the original booking) and discovered that the price was now a whooping $137 SGD.

He called later again and the price was in the $140s.

Grace and I were pretty worried that the same thing could happen to us because we were intending to book flights for our trip to Hong Kong next month, from the same airline.

I recall checking the prices for our flight sometime last weekend – and it was standing at $359 SGD.

This evening, we looked up the price again, and were delighted to find that the total price had fallen to $299 SGD all inclusive. (With our return flight only costing $43 SGD (excluding surcharges and taxes).

But we held back the booking for a while – because we still had some final arrangements to make.

Four hours ago, I logged into the airline’s website to double-check the prices … and did a double take because the price for our original return flight had more than doubled … from $43 SGD to $200+ SGD – excluding surcharges and taxes. That’s practically costing an arm and a leg in comparison to the prices we saw earlier.

That was when I texted Grace in panic – and we decided to book right then on the spot, lest the prices surged further.

The later return flight (an alternative to our original intended flight) was comparatively cheaper ($119 SGD excluding surcharges and taxes), leading to a total cost of $375 SGD all inclusive per person.

That was the price we were supposed to get while I made my booking.

Or so I thought.

After filling in all our personal details and credit card information, I clicked on ‘confirm’. That was when I looked at receipt, and did a double take.

W.T.F?!

Why was I charged $762 for two people?!

Did a re-check on the price. Apparently, the price per person had been bumped up by a further $6 SGD while I was busily filling in the reservation form.

Sidenote: The additional $12 ($6 per person x 2) is not due to the facilitation fee as seen in the screenshot above. Everything was inclusive in the quotation I received earlier.

Blame my slow typing skills or whatsoever. (Although I generally type pretty fast, albeit not fast enough to beat this c*cked up system.)

Ah well, too bad.

Air tickets have already been paid for. No point harping on it, aye? Just sit back and bask in the happiness that our trip to Hong Kong has now already been booked.

Four hours later (20 minutes ago) …

I decided to re-access the airline booking system to check out the prices again. (My main motive was to hope that the prices would have risen further so that I can laugh at how I had managed to secure our air tickets before the further price escalations.)

I was in for a shock.

Apparently, the prices for our original intended return flight had dropped all over again … from the earlier $200 odd SGD back to $43 SGD!

Can someone just say, ARGHHHHHH?!

I don’t know why this is happening – but my guess is that the airline presumed no nutcase out there will be making flight bookings at 4 A.M. and thus reduced the price to match the lower demand. (For the record, I made my booking at midnight.)

Counting all the possible surcharges and taxes, the total flight cost per person would have been …

-BIGFATSIGH-

Heartache. We practically overpaid by $80 SGD.

And Grace dear – I don’t know whether you’d be laughing or fuming at this point in time. But … I think we’ve just been successfully manipulated (and screwed over) by Jetstar’s online booking system.