Booking flights already has such a horrible user experience, because the princing often seems totally random, and this will just make it worse. Hell no.
It might seem that way if you don't fly often, but pricing is pretty normal across the board when you look year over year. For the most part, prices are higher when you're less than a week from departure or when flying on a holiday or business heavy travel day (Monday morning/Friday night).
Also just use the new google flights interface and look at the price trends chart. Makes it way clearer whats going on.
The part that IS annoying is airlines selling basic econ seats so you think you're getting a good deal but realize you'll end up spending more just for a checked bag + reserved seat.
I would disagree. I track on google flights 3+ months before I want to go and feel that I get a reasonable price every time. 3 months in advanced obviously doesn't work for everyone, but using google flights (or any other tracking site) to track will definitely help you get tickets at the right time.
Yep, google flights is especially useful because it makes it easy to observe the effects of arriving/departing a few days before or after you planned to. Another commenter in this thread mentioned that certain booking patterns (e.g. booking popular business routes over weekdays) result in higher prices and this is a great way to circumvent that.
Google flights isn't perfect though. You still need to check a more old-school aggregator (I prefer skyscanner) first before pulling the trigger, and of course Southwest as they aren't on any aggregators that I know of.
Checking out skiplagged is a good idea too because it shows you the hypothetical prices of booking legs of a trip a-la-carte rather than as a full ticket. This has the added risk of leaving you SoL if a connecting flight gets delayed/cancelled, causing you to miss a later flight on the same journey but different ticket. If you're careful to not book flights when you know there might be weather or time concerns, though, it can save you some money. For example, I wouldn't be concerned about flying a leg on ORD-LAX during the summer time with a 4 hour layover because that's unlikely to get cancelled/delayed, and if it is, you could get rerouted quickly. Airlines hate that this website exists which is at least adequate evidence that it can save you good money.
For me the annoying part is that it's hard to find out when reasonably priced tickets are available. When booking for family I can be very open to suggestions, like "give me good prices to any of these cities for 4-7 night trip with 0-1 stops" whenever in April-May".
I've had good results from kiwi.com. They allow you to use date ranges and will can show a map with fares to various locations. They also include airlines that don't normally participate in aggregators (e.g. Southwest). They also allow multi-leg itineraries, which is really useful for longer trips.
Kiwi also comes up with suggestions to stitch the trip together from multiple, individually issued tickets. This can bring down the cost, but the drawback is that airline is then not responsible for helping you in case of delays and you may need to pick luggage mid travel and check them in again.
I believe Kiwi underwrites this in that they will rebook you another flight and pay costs incurred hence they pad with long layovers even if a shorter connection is available to reduce the risk exposure. They will probably get better at this over time, it seems at the moment they are quite risk adverse and it's all very manual - i.e. you have to call them to tell them that your flight was late and you've missed second connection.
Also just use the new google flights interface and look at the price trends chart. Makes it way clearer whats going on.
The part that IS annoying is airlines selling basic econ seats so you think you're getting a good deal but realize you'll end up spending more just for a checked bag + reserved seat.