To anyone other than an airline bean counter, airfares make absolutely no sense. They have no relation to the distance flown or the duration of your journey —in fact, the cheapest tickets often send you off on multiple, time-wasting detours. There’s little transparency in the process of how airlines arrive at their prices, and they’re in a constant state of flux. Indeed, the industry worldwide logs more than 3.9 million fare changes every single day, according to the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (APTCO), an industry data provider.

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