Buying airplane tickets on Virgin America makes me furious.

Buying airplane tickets on Virgin America makes me furious, especially when pricing games are being played.

I had to buy plane tickets in two separate transactions that would let two people fly separately on different days but fly back together on the same flight.

I opened up two different browsers (IE7 and Firefox) so any settings made in one browser wouldn't affect the other one. Using Kayak.com I found the cheapest airfare at Virgin America for both of our trips, clicked through , and entered my billing info. I then purchased one ticket for a great price ($175). Next, I completed buying the other ticket only to be told that my original cheap ticket selection ($169) was suddenly unavailable and the only option for the desired flight was $243! Every other flight for the day and time were still cheap at the same $169 price.

Could it be that I bought the last cheap ticket for the flight home when booking the first flight? Maybe Virgin America has some timer, counter, or cookie set so that a user can only get one deal per unit time and then sneakily be shown the expensive prices after the first ticket is bought?

I tried to get prices for Virgin America using both browsers, both using Kayak and by directly visiting the Virgin American website. The specific flight was still extra expensive. Ok, maybe the price is just high. Next, I tried a different computer and also found that the price for the specific flight was still high. Hmm... I'm still not satisfied since it seems awfully suspicious that that one particular flight is so expensive while all the others are cheap and that there are still plenty of seats left.

Where can I get a different IP address? All my computers are plugged into the same router and I think look like the same IP address to the outside world. Ah ha! I also have a wireless connection on my laptop, and the wireless network has a different set of IP addresses. I visited the Virgin America website using the wireless network and the prices were cheap again! I was right! I quickly bought the right ticket at the cheap price.

Just to retest my hypothesis, after buying my ticket I immediately went back and searched for the same flight again. Sure enough, the price for the specific times had skyrocketed from $169 to $243!Very sneaky. It's completely legal but I feel like the company is playing games with me. I would rethink about buying tickets with them in the future.

(On a related note, Amazon.com used to do variable pricing for their goods (depending on when and how often you viewed an item) and that really upset a lot of people. See http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/09/38622 for the story in detail.)