1) Fare Classes and Seat "Buckets"

On a plane, there's no single "type" of economy ticket. Seats are divided into pools (buckets) with different prices and conditions. Cheaper pools have fewer seats and disappear first. When a given bucket sells out — the system automatically shows a more expensive one. Then the opposite can happen: if sales slow down, the airline can open up a cheaper pool and the price drops.

2) Real-Time Demand

Every search, every seat purchased is a signal. The algorithm (often with ML) assesses: "selling fast → raise price", "selling slowly → lower". This happens continuously and varies depending on the day of the week, route, holidays, school breaks, concerts or sports matches.

3) Competition and "Price Wars"

One airline lowers the price to Barcelona → others react. Systems compare hundreds of routes and can adjust pricing several times within an hour. On routes with many carriers, price "fluctuation" is greater than on a monopoly.

4) Fare Rules ("Fences")

Prices are governed by rules like:

• APEX (advance purchase): cheaper tickets require purchase e.g. 21/14/7 days before departure,
• min/max stay: e.g. mandatory Saturday night,
• refundable vs non-refundable: flexibility = higher price. Break one of these rules? The system moves you to a more expensive pool.

5) Seasonality, Calendar, Time of Day

High season, holidays, long weekends — prices rise. Same with morning flights on "business" routes. Sometimes shifting your departure by a few hours makes a difference of several hundred zloty.

6) Operating Costs and Risks

Fuel, exchange rates, airport fees, taxes, aircraft rotations, crew and "no-show" risk — all of this feeds into the model. The algorithm tries to maximize revenue, not "fairness".

7) Different Channels, Different Inventory

It happens that a cheaper bucket is visible only in the airline's app or only in an OTA (e.g. Skyscanner/agent). Channels can have their own seat allocations or different refresh delays.

8) Cookie Myths

No, simply "looking" at a ticket usually doesn't raise the price. It's more about pool changes over time or other customers' activity. However, differentiation by market (currency/region) does occur, not by your cookies.

Summary

Ticket prices are a living organism fed by demand, competition and fare rules. They jump because algorithms aren't looking for the "lowest price", but the highest revenue from each seat. Your tools: flexibility with dates and times, price alerts, channel comparison, a bit of patience and quick reflexes when a gem comes along.