Appear as a local when accessing USA website from Oz, how to?

[AVC]

Hi all,
I'm trying to book some flights on American Airlines. If I go to AA.com.au the flights are around $300 each.

If I go to aa.com they only cost $150 each, but as soon as you select the flights and go "next" an error message appears saying the flights/fares are no longer available, when you retry, the flights have jumped up to the Australian prices.

Logically, I need to book them "from the US".

I recall seeing some posts about using a proxy or some such thing.

Worst case I can wait until my pilot buddy is in LAX, and either get him to do it, or VNC in to his machine from here. I need a fairly secure solution, as my credit card details are involved.

Any thoughts?

 

[hummel]

Hi all,
I'm trying to book some flights on American Airlines. If I go to AA.com.au the flights are around $300 each.

If I go to aa.com they only cost $150 each, but as soon as you select the flights and go "next" an error message appears saying the flights/fares are no longer available, when you retry, the flights have jumped up to the Australian prices.

Logically, I need to book them "from the US".

I recall seeing some posts about using a proxy or some such thing.

Worst case I can wait until my pilot buddy is in LAX, and either get him to do it, or VNC in to his machine from here. I need a fairly secure solution, as my credit card details are involved.

Any thoughts?

I think your after a VPN

Google free vpns or I pay for express VPN and it works like it should.

 

[Tortuga]

I think you can get a free trial with hidemyass, then just ask for a refund before the free trial ends.

 

[A330]

Be careful enerting credit card details when using a free VPN (not normally an issue with paid VPN's). Maybe just book using a US based OTA like Orbitz?

 

[Princess Fiona]

That's a strange one ? Have never had the AA.com site refuse to price a ticket for me and re-route to .au
I have https://www.witopia.net/ for geo-blocked sites ( BBC, ITV etc) and works very well

 

[ChrisFlyer]

Just to clarify, did you enter your country of residence (or billing address - depending on how far you got) as Aus or the US?

 

[AVC]

It didn't re-route me to the Australian site. Regardless of "country of residence" entered, it threw up an error saying "flight/fare not available", then when you re-did the process the fare had changed to the the Australian site's price (but only for the actual flight that I picked). If I chose a different flight, it would do the same for that flight, and so on.

I might get some screen shots tonight.

 

[AVC]

Be careful enerting credit card details when using a free VPN (not normally an issue with paid VPN's). Maybe just book using a US based OTA like Orbitz?

That seems to work, thanks. It appears to be a day behind for availability (I'm booking flights as soon as they are available).

 

[penegal]

Seems a little strange to me. I book off the AA US site from Australia IP addresses all the time.

I just did a dummy booking and its working fine - try clearing your cookies if you have been jumping between the two. If that doesn't work, perhaps try a browser upgrade?