i was looking at some tickets for around christmas time and last week i found a fare for about 220, then all of a sudden over the weekend it jumped to about 350. is that normal? or is it just a little too far in advance? when is the best time to buy your tickets, and do fares usually fluctuate or is it just gonna stay on a steady increase from here on out? thanks
Are you sure you typed in the same info both times? Sometimes I type the date in wrong. I wouldn't wait long. Christmas is such a heavy travel time. I'm getting to ready to book my tickets myself.
Fares fluctuate all the time. It depends upon the season. I wouldn't wait till the very end, either. If you can afford them, buy them. I've seen tickets go from $275 or something to around $400 within a week for one destination I was going to. From where to where are you going?
I'll be flying to New Jersey in a couple weeks and I went and checked on plane fare. By far the cheapest is Air Tran, $99 each way. You really can't beat that. Of course the pilots may not be trained very well and the plane probably hasn't been serviced in years, but thats a risk I take to save a few bucks. Damn, I am a cheap ass.
Airlines use computerized programs to constantly adjust ticket prices according to the perceived demand. And then they wonder why people hate them. If you are really effected by a $100 bucks one way or the other maybe you could keep checking the fares for a while and put in a Priceline bid for the lowest fare you've seen. You have to be flexible in your travel times.
This is a great site for finding the lowest available airfare. It's the software that many travel agents use and I have found substantial savings. The nice thing is that you can find bookings to and from everywhere using any currency. So, I booked a series of internal flights in the US even though I am paying in New Zealand dollars. I got the discount rates that are often not available by using a foreign credit card on the United website. Here's the website: http://www.itasoftware.com/
