ppalette

I travel with 8 people to Europe every few years. (2 families) Can any one tell me why when I look for plane tickets online, when I enter 8 passengers the totel price is more. Rather than when I enter 4? I get nervous I will buy 4, and than make another transaction and I won't be able to buy 4 more. I try this on many sites and its the same every time...any ideas??

Christina

I don't understand, maybe I'm reading your question wrong -- you want to know why 8 tickets cost more than 4? Why wouldn't they.

StCirq

I don't know about plane tickets, but on the SNCF site you can't book tickets for more than 6 passengers at a time. So if I need to book for more than, I call them on the phone.

Call the airline.

kenderina

I think many websites don't let you to buy so many tickets individually. Maybe you can have a group tariff through a travel agent.

saps

I assume you mean the per person cost is more when you purchase 8 than when you purchase 4.

Put 4 on hold (many airlines let you hold for 24 hours). Then purchase the next set of 4. Once that transaction is complete go back and buy the first set of 4 that you put on hold.

ms_go

This is because all of the reservations on one record (PNR) must be identical, including have the same fare basis--so the systems are defaulting to the fare class that has eight available seats. To have some reservations at a lower fare, you would have to split into several PNRs.

travfirst

I think they have less then 8 tickets of the lower priced economy class. For example, Continental has discount economy, economy, full fare economy – all priced differently.

Sometimes with 8 travelers you can get better deal with agent.

FainaAgain

On each plane a set number of seats are reserved for a cheaper price. It looks like on your flight they have only 4 cheap seats, the other 4 are more expensive.

If you're nervous, call the airline and ask to help with the reservations. It's $5 additional, not sure per purchase or per ticket.

suze

As above, this is a situation I'd get on the telephone so you can talk to a airline agent directly.

ppalette

thank you. I will call. Yes, I did mean the cost per tickets goes up with the more people I have. Sorry to be unclear.

Thanks again

NeoPatrick

Yes, it is very rare that an airline will have 8 seats available all at the same "lowest possible" fare. So some of those 8 are higher priced tickets. I'm not so sure an agent will be able to do better, but it's worth a try.
I've run into this before just pricing one ticket or two. Finally I called, and the bottom line is the first ticket I purchased would be cheaper because it was the last of the lowest possible fare seats available on the plane. The second ticket was a little more. No getting around it.