Cheap Airfare "Hack"

I've said it numerous times on this blog: Airfare is one of the most expensive things about travelling.  Because of this, people are always trying to figure out a way to score cheaper airplane tickets.  

Some of the most common money saving tips people give are to book tickets: 

• at a certain time of day
• on certain days of the week 
• buying 2 one way flights instead of a return
• after clearing your browser history/cookies/cache
• after masking your IP address to make it seem like you live in another country

To put it short and simple, all of these aren't true/worth the hassle.

I decided to do a little bit of...let's call it a scientific inquiry...about the last airfare "hack" on the above list. In case you aren't familiar with it, there is a theory that if you can change the IP address of your computer so it shows you're from a different country than you actually are, you'll get cheaper airfare.  The reasoning behind this is that it's believed people who live in wealthier countries are charged more since they could hypothetically afford it.  For example, if you make your computer show you're from Malawi, the poorest country in the world, the airline won't charge you as much even if you're sitting in your mansion in Luxembourg.

I've been thinking a little more recently about heading to Cairns in Queensland to go swimming at the Great Barrier Reef.  For fun, I wanted to see if I could actually get cheaper flights by changing my location.  Before I did the search, I cleared my history, cache, cookies, and everything else you can delete on an internet browser. I also went into Chrome's "incognito" mode to help even more.

I then did the control search using Skyscanner, hypothetically flying from Adelaide to Cairns on some random dates in July.

The cheapest return flights were for $431 AUD.

I then repeated the whole process of clearing everything on my browser and going incognito.  This time I used an extension on Chrome to mask my IP address which would trick any website into thinking I was from a different country.  I first chose the USA.

After changing the currency back to AUD, identical results came up.  Return flights for $431 on the same dates as the original search.

Next up I did the same process yet again but changed my location to the United Kingdom.

Once again, $431 AUD.

Repeated again with Singapore.

Same result. 

And finally with the Netherlands.

Yet again, the same thing.

Now if I really wanted to look into this more, I would have paid for the more advanced version of the Chrome extension to appear to be from some much poorer places but I'm trying to save money to buy a flight, not spend it. Based on this short little experiment, it's pretty clear that changing your location doesn't make a difference.  Because I had nothing to do last night, I tried this a few more times using different locations and got the same results.

That said, there is some truth to this myth.  There are stories about people pulling this off, mainly using Chile as their home location.  However, when they go to check in at the airport, there is a red flag on their ticket saying they paid much less than they should have.  Meaning while this trick will occasionally work if you get really lucky, it will have been a waste of time when you get to the airport and have to make up the fare difference (which would likely cost you more than if you had bought the ticket normally at the time of purchase).

Myth busted.

That's all for now.  Bye.