Most Europeans airlines use Amadeus system for their online booking system. I had my first doubts about this system last year. I got it confirmed since I’ve been fucking around in this project for an airline company. Now I’m indeed 100% sure that this system is a total crap. The major flaw is the ease on how anyone can rise the price of a flight ticket.
Here is a simple example. When people order tickets the system makes his calculation and rises the prices of a fare depending on how much seat there is left. The thing is, the system trigger the calculation right before the payment. It means that if I book 10 tickets for a Reykjavik - Stockholm with SAS now, and I stop the process before filling up my credit card information Amadeus will count it as booked. Hence, anybody can rise up the price of a flight ticket on demand. When you book it 3 months in advance, the system is updating / checking / freeing unpaid reservation (like my fake example) once every month. A month before, once every week, a week before every 24h, finally the last day it’s updated every hour and anytime manually by the appropriate agent.
I triggered a Reykjavik - Stockholm by mistake and have been waiting it to fall down. I finally gave up Stockholm for Oslo this summer :)
