ELI5: What is the logic/strategy behind buying cheap plane tickets using VPN?

VPN
1

I have often seen VPN services being advertised for the benefits of buying a cheaper plane ticket if you are spoofing a different location.

How is that supposed to work? What alternate location do I need to “be in” for the price to be lower?

How does it make sense to buy a flight from a location you are not at?

Example: I want to fly New York to London. (This would imply I am already in NY). To get a cheaper price, am I supposed to VPN myself to the UK? Or Los Angeles? Or Australia?

What is the logic for the airlines servers that will affect the price based on my location? The flight will still be taking place between the same two cities.

Or does it have something to do with currency? (Which I also don’t find likely since many people could also be buying domestic flights)

Thanks in advance!

2

Quite frankly, there isn’t really much of a logic simply because it isn’t a thing barring some very particular exceptions.

  1. Some low cost carriers have different pricing in different currencies due to tinkered exchange rates. In some very rare cases there are more significant savings to be had (Norse Atlantic comes to mind, they sometimes apply promos to European but not American sites)

  2. Mostly a thing of the past but some airlines (especially in South America) have subsidized rates for residents. Not exactly IATA-compliant and used to require some form of proof (e.g. tax numbers) but it wasn’t unheard of to get away with it.

  3. Tourist fares. This is mostly a Chinese thing and doesn’t apply to all carriers but some do charge foreigners more than they would with people booking on the Chinese website.

Bottom line, no you typically don’t need a VPN even for those rare cases that do exist. Like so many other urban legends revolving around flying, it’s mostly an urban legend.

3

Former travel agent here - I could be wrong but I think you might be confusing a couple of things.

Some domestic or regional flights might be cheaper “in country” like if you were flying Rio to Sao Paolo it might be better to be in Brazil and have the prices in local currency.

It’s possible people use VPNs to stop airlines knowing that they you are continuously looking into the same flight and periodically marking them up based on your IP address to force pressure on you to buy. It’s a horribly unethical practice, not all Airlines do this but some do.

I’ve been out of the game a little while but all international fares should be roughly the same save some currency conversions that would be negligible in difference.

There DID used to be special student/youth rates thru certain agencies you could get in Australia but these agencies died during COVID there. I’m unsure if they exist elsewhere but as they were negotiated with IATA I’m not sure they are. Those discounts were huge back in the day and great for one way/round the world travel.

4

Others have explained perfectly well why this doesn’t really work. So why would a VPN service say it does? And the answer to THAT is that VPN services have a marketing problem. Most people just don’t care enough about security and privacy to use a VPN. (Maybe they should, but they don’t.) People who DO care enough — they already have a VPN. So to grow market share, you need to sell people on something besides security and privacy. So these companies go big on “unlocking different content on Netflix” and BS microbenefits like seeing different prices for plane tickets.

5

Airline pricing is a very complicated subject, with a lot of differing factors affecting how much you pay for a flight. it’s entirely possible that you may pay a different price depending on where you are booking from.

Taking for example your New York to London flight. You might find that British Airways offers a sale one week for UK based passengers. Tricking the website in to thinking you are in the UK might qualify you for this saving, while booking from the US might not qualify.

I’m not sure if this really happens though - it might just be a myth made up by the VPN operators to push their services.

6

It doesn’t really work. Otherwise you’d hear it in every single VPN ad forever. “Use our VPN and save hundreds!” “No, use our VPN and save thousands!” You may find cheaper flights because the servers that you are accessing may have stale, or standard fares. But when you go to book, it’ll be practically the same price.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that a round trip flight from JFK to LHR is $400.

Say that you wanted a flight from JFK to LHR, and a VPN set to Mongolia will show you $400. But the same flight, accessed from a US based computer is showing $700. Well, clearly you’re saving $300 in Mongolia, right? Well… Until you go to book, and it’s $700. What gives!?

Because so few people from Mongolia want to fly JFK-LHR, the servers are likely using stale, or outdated prices. Or they just give up completely, and show you the “standard” price. Until you go to actually purchase your tickets, then it will actually query the airlines or travel agency that’s selling the tickets, and maybe that flight is already mostly full, so they’ve had to up the price, and they come back with: “actually, it’s $700.”

Now, there are rumors of price manipulation by airlines, and I kind of believe them. That by searching your flight beforehand, and then by coming back a few hours later, it’s going to be more expensive. This may be caused by travel agencies or airlines upping the price because you looked at that flight beforehand. A VPN may be handy here, because a completely different IP address looked up the flight, and that IP address gets a higher price now (make sure to also clear your cookies). Of course, it might also just be that you weren’t the only one looking at that flight, and it’s starting to fill up now. To combat this, I look up flights on my work computer, and then purchase them on my phone, or home computer. Does it save me money? Probably not.

7

What works is making the travel itinerary itself look like you might be more price sensitive.

Airlines do price discrimination between people who don’t care about price (business) and those who do (leisure).

That is why there and back Monday to Thursday is more expensive than there and back Friday to Monday and short term booking is usually more costly than farther out bookings. You can also try flying from and to different airports that are close by.

Mind, these all only work sometimes and to a certain degree.

8

Tenho o seguinte caso: o vôo da gol que quero pegar só aparece com VPN de fora do país. Alguém explica?

9

A few years ago I wanted to book flights to Spain. Went onto SleazyJets website, and they were £xx. Ok, went to talk to the other half and looked at the same flights again; now they were £xxx. Hmm. Looked around elsewhere for a while but no carriers went to the airport I wanted on the dates I wanted, so went back to the website and now the price was £xxxx! Still didn’t book, as now they were expensive.

My office laptop is on a VPN, so went to show a colleague what was happening, and the price was £xx again! Suspicious. So I took the work laptop home, signed into the VPN and also my home PC (no VPN), entered the same details on both. My PC showed the price now as £xxxxx - but the VPN’d PC showed it as £xx again, for the same flight.

So I booked it via the PC on the VPN, and saved myself £xxx.

10

Americans pay so much for flights compared to other countries. My mum used to be able to get flight from London to NY for about £3-400 max (-$500). For me booking in the states to go to London on the exact same flight was $1200. I don’t use a vpn but I assume it gets around the bulllshit American price.

11

Some sellers (not just airlines) examine the browser header, and will alter pricing based on ‘rules’.

I’ve heard (unverified) stories of hotels showing higher rates if you are using an Apple device (because Apple devices are a premium product, therefore the user has more disposable income).

I’ve also personally seen different (not necessarily cheaper) prices on the same airline booking system, depending on being physically in France or UK (on the same day).

It wouldn’t surprise me if a using a VPN would cause a similar situation.

12

It’s mostly related to the various carriers having cookie/IP tracking to alter pricing based on some metrics. The benefit of a VPN being you can infinitely* keep changing those metrics to see if you can get a better deal.

13

Norse Atlantic

I believe this is run by the same guy that ran Norwegian Air. With Norwegian, setting currency to NOK saved me about $150-$200 on a round trip flight, not even on VPN. I’ve tried it with other airlines and I haven’t seen that work since Norwegian closed down stopped transatlantic flights, but now I’m curious if a VPN will work for Norse Atlantic and also setting it to NOK.

I generally don’t believe in the VPN thing though as there’s been tons of little tests showing it generally doesn’t work except for maybe the off edge case.

14

Not all airlines are part of IATA (eg. Ryanair), but also there are other travel-related expenses like car rentals and hotels where this might help.

15

It’s worth noting that for accomodation the scenario is different, and locals will get a better price on places like Airbnb

16

the price increasing on multiple searches is a myth.

Flight prices change all the time. And people are buying tickets all the time. Sometimes the cheap seats sell out. Then the price will increase.

There are often advance purchase requirements 21/14/7 days in advance. If you searched yesterday at 22 days out then searched today, the price will jump.

Depending how far you get in the booking process, the airline will ‘hold’ the seat/fare. If you exit out, that fare is still held for a short time. If that was the last seat at the lower fare, the price will jump when you search again. Eventually/usually the seat will be released when you don’t actually book it and the price might go back down. But again if there is limited seats, someone else could buy it in the meantime.

17

I’ve seen a bit of this. I think it only happens with one-way fares - returns get priced based on the starting point regardless, but one-way can be priced on either end.

I did save on an American Airlines one way London-Chicago flight in 2021: came out lower in GBP on the UK site than USD on the US one.

Some of this might also be because US cards charge the airlines more for transactions than UK ones - airlines can’t pass on the saving explicitly (and benefit from it through cobranded cards in the US) but if their costs are lower selling in GBP to UK cards they can reflect that in regional pricing.

18

This happens with Air New zealand between Australian and nz. I fly a lot and always check both the .co.nz and .com.au airnz sites. Same flight, same time etc, one is often on special and the other not.
No need for a vpn though.

19

Could the price difference between France/UK be different tax rates?

20

Booking in the airline’s home currency almost always saves a significant amount. It’s not just Norwegian (I’ve had the same experience on British Air and Lufthansa). Consumers have access to much better exchange rates than they did even just a decade ago, but businesses that exchange on your behalf as part of some other service haven’t been exposed to the competitive pressures from this shift, and so they get away with high rates (which used to be standard) and pocket the difference.