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Comment by forgotpwtomain | Hacker News Reader

I've had the experience of switching from a localized google to google.com/ncr and had ticket prices drop ~4X. I think airlines already try to game the system based on country of origin.

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+1 for https://google.com/ncr is the first thing I do on any browser.

- Latest version of Google Images

- Better Google Search results

- etc. etc.

What does /ncr do? I'm having a hilariously difficult time googling for it because I usually google straight from the omni bar.

"No Country Redirect", I believe. Specifies to avoid geolocation

A lot of times, airlines sell tickets based on where the ticket is issued for multiple reasons. If you read some fare rules for these country/region restricted tickets, it'll say something like "valid only when ticket issued in Japan" which leads to people trying to get a flight ticketed on a region specific site of orbitz/expedia/some-airline.co.jp

Tried this once and found that JAL will not sell tickets to anyone with a middle name. (Presumably due to a bug on their website, where you can only enter given and family name for the ticket, but you have to use your middle name for Secure Flight, and when they don't match, it fails. No combination of putting my middle name in the given or family field worked. Ended up booking an AA codeshare for $55 extra dollars :/)

Flight search is an incredibly dumb domain e.g. in this case, the carrier is regulated by the government to keep fares within a reasonable bound, but only for residents of that country. People booking from overseas can be gouged with impunity!

Let's not talk about codeshares.

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