Made any travel mistakes lately?

[Beano]

Sometimes it's you yourself blocking up the cheap fare bucket. I had a few experiences where the payment failed and it took about 4 hours for the seats to become available at the same price as before. Or it could even be repeating the search in another browser / window before the previous pending booking has timed out.

This is also a method to force a higher fare bucket if you need it for higher points earning etc.

This happened to me. If you take a booking as far as the "pay" page and cancle, your fare is locked and won't be released for several hours.