Re: Why do airfare prices fluctuate over time?

It's called yield management.  The airlines have it down to an art
form.  The objective is to get the most amount of money they can from
each flight.

At one time, the airlines sold all seats for the same price, but then
decided that they could attract additional money by offering discounts
for people willing to book far in advance. Those people tended to be
people who didn't normally fly, so the airlines were able to attract
additional passengers to their flights, along with additional revenue,
without jeopardizing their base ridership.

The process has evolved to the point where the airlines know which days
will attract more passengers, like the start and end of spring break,
the Christmas holidays, and Thanksgiving.  They price seats higher on
those days.  They also know the days when it will be harder to fill
aircraft, like mid-week in February to Europe, when they will drop
prices to attract additional traffic to fill their planes.

Their general strategy is to set an initial price, based on how many
seats they expect to fill.  They monitor how quickly the seats are
selling, and adjust the price upward until they feel they will get the
highest price they can on average, while still trying to fill the
aircraft.  Occasionally, they will raise the prices too quickly, and
back off a bit as the date of the flight gets closer, but that doesn't
happen very often.

In your specific case, I would expect the price to rise further as the
seats fill up, particularly in the last 7 to 10 days before departure.
I wouldn't expect it to drop back to where it started from.

On April 7 I priced a round trip flight for travel on the weekend of
June 24. The price on the airline's website was just under $300. When I
price it today, the price is over $414 for the same flight numbers on
the same day. I can check seat availability at AA.com, and currently the
 flights are less than 50% full.

Anybody have any info why this happens? Any tips for when to find the
lowest price? Anybody think it's going to come back down at some point?

Thanks in advance.