So, can you really get cheaper flights using your browser’s ‘incognito’ mode or clearing your cookies?

The idea that using ‘incognito’ mode while browsing the internet to buy flights will stop airlines from collecting data and charging extra fees is just a myth, experts say.

The misconception is that airlines use cookies to track the internet activity of potential buyers. Once they determine that someone is looking for a specific ticket, they can start raising the prices.

But economists, travel experts and booking platforms all argue that this is simply not the price of airline tickets, and that this is completely incorrect.

“It’s the travel hack tip that will never die. It’s total nonsense,” said Clint Henderson, editor-in-chief of The Points Guy.

“I’ve been trying for 20 years myself and have never found a cheaper deal with an incognito browser.”

‘Incognito mode’ in Google Chrome browser allows users to prevent websites from using cookies to track them

Henderson also pointed out one 2016 survey by Consumer Reports which conducted 372 separate searches for a large number of flights over two weeks in browsers with cookies enabled and disabled.

Although the same prices were generated for almost all products, there were differences in 42 cases.

In 25 of those cases, the private mode browser produced cheaper results, but in 17 cases it was more expensive.

Henderson explained how airlines actually set fares. In almost all cases, the aircraft cabin is divided into different ‘buckets’ with seats. Seats in those buckets are sold for different prices.

The last seats to be allocated are in the more expensive buckets. Cheaper buckets, on the other hand, will fill up faster.

“Booking last-minute travel leads to the highest price tickets as all those cheaper fare classes are sold out,” says Henderson.

If tickets sell quickly, airlines will close the cheaper seats and move buyers to more expensive seats. If tickets sell slower than expected, cheaper buckets will be opened instead to sell more seats.

Certain buckets, or seats within buckets, are only made available within a certain window before the date of the flight.

Prices are therefore determined by current demand, the number of available seats and the time of booking.

In fact one recent research Economists from the University of Chicago, University of Texas, Berkeley and Yale found that the prices of other similar flights offered by other airlines are not even taken into account.

Pictured is a representation of the rates. Column 13 is the booking class. The last seats to be allocated are in the more expensive buckets

According to Henderson, the best thing consumers can do is set up a Google Flight alert and keep an eye on the price for a few weeks.

The optimal window is three to four months before a domestic flight and six to eight months before an international flight, he said.

Fueling the myth that rates are dynamically adjusted based on browsing history and interest is likely that they generally bounce around a lot – and can have a tendency to increase.

‘When the Internet took off, consumers could suddenly see different prices for the same ticket on sites like Expedia or Kayak. And so people have always thought, “If they show me different prices, the airline must be able to track me somehow.”

Another phenomenon driving the myth is that when using a comparison site such as Skyscanner or Google Flights, prices sometimes, but rarely, increase after the user is redirected to a new web page to actually purchase the ticket.

Experts say this is because the data they read while browsing is ‘cached’ data. That means it may take a few hours and only if you proceed to purchase the flight will the live price be displayed.