Traveling with family or friends can be super fun, but if you travel as a group, you could be paying more for your airfares than you would if you were traveling alone.
Wisebread says that airline reservation systems have multiple airfare classes and a set number of seats in any particular class. This is not about whether you book seats in the economy class or the first class. In economy class alone, there could be 10 different price classes.
If you purchase a ticket for a lone traveler, the system would show you the airfare with the lowest price. Simple enough.
It gets complicated when you make a booking for multiple travelers. In any one reservation, the system only allows you to book all tickets at the same price point. This means that if there’s only one seat left in the lowest price point, all the passengers in your party would be moved up to a higher airfare class that has enough empty seats.
To avoid paying more than you have to, perform multiple searches. For example, find out how much the airfare costs for one passenger and for two passengers. If the price per person is the same for both options, go ahead and book both passengers on the same reservation. Otherwise, split the purchase into two reservations to take advantage of the one available cheaper seat.
This technique has its drawbacks, though. You may have to pay extra fees to select your seats so everyone sits together. Also, if you run into delays and the airline has to rebook your seats, the airline may not know that your group travels together and you may end up on different flights.
Read whole article on 4 Secrets to Getting the Lowest Rate From Travel Websites