Brit uses browser hack to bag business class seat for less than price of economy
A Brit claims he bought business class seats for less than the price of economy using a simple browser trick.
Cameron Stewart said he ended up with a lie flat bed without breaking the bank simply by adjusting the language setting on the airline's booking website.
He shared a photo of his girlfriend and himself happily sitting in the seats, and explained how the method works.
"Travel hack!!! Sometimes it pays to learn a language!" the photojournalist wrote next to the picture.
"I played around with the LATAM (Airlines Group) website months ago and found if I changed the language from English to Spanish - the business class bed seats became cheaper then [sic] economy," he said.
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"I used google translate to book my tickets - and here we are about to embark on a six hour flight with a bed for a cheaper price then it is in economy!
"Always check flight websites in multiple languages to get the best deal.... sometimes the prices are dramatically different depending on what language you book in."
Cameron had heard rumours that the South American airline's websites sometimes produced different ticket prices depending on what language your browser is set to.
When he was booking a flight from Santiago to Easter Island Cameron spotted how expensive the tickets were, so decided to give the trick a go, switching on a VPN to make it seem like he was located in Chile at the time and changing the browser's language.
First and business class have wider seats and more comfortable surroundings (Getty Images/EyeEm)"I cleared all cookies from my browser, and used private browser mode so there was no way the website would determine I was outside the country," he told 9News.
"After getting my head around Spanish and using Google Translate each line – I was able to book lie-flat beds in LATAM's brand new Boeing 787 for the five hour flight to the most remote airport in the world – Easter Island.
While Cameron claimed the prices he got were cheaper, he admitted the trick didn't always work.
"With airline pricing going up and down, sideways and in circles on a daily basis – it sometimes works, sometimes it doesn't," he said.
Large numbers of people have claimed to have similar successes online, with one man writing on Reddit last month that he "once saved $700 booking tickets in Peru by using Spanish rather than English."
The theory can be tested out online by manually selecting a different language or location on an airline's website, and then switching on a VPN.
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The prices can then be compared to those found on the airline's website in the original language and location, or on a price comparison site.
If the trick does indeed work, then figuring out why will likely remain as big a mystery as airline pricing at large, which is at the mercy of many different variables including supply and demand, fuel cost and global economics.
Have you successfully used the trick? Email [email protected]
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