Saving on Airfare

We just booked a cruise and some days in the park for Nov 2017. Airfare isn't available for that time yet, but I priced out similar dates for this year. It's double what we usually pay!!! How likely is it that prices will be the same next year? (We are going during NJ week.) And is it worth it? We chose that week so our kids didn't miss too much school but now I am reconsidering. Do you have any recommendations on saving on airfare? We are a family of 5.

CicilyMJ said:

We just booked a cruise and some days in the park for Nov 2017. Airfare isn't available for that time yet, but I priced out similar dates for this year. It's double what we usually pay!!! How likely is it that prices will be the same next year? (We are going during NJ week.) And is it worth it? We chose that week so our kids didn't miss too much school but now I am reconsidering. Do you have any recommendations on saving on airfare? We are a family of 5.

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It's unlikely that prices will be the same next year. Chances are very good that they will go up instead of down. If you are traveling during a holiday period, like Thanksgiving or Jersey week, you're going to pay more than if you are traveling during a time when there is less demand.

The best way to get good airfare is to fly during off-peak times: Tues.-Wed.-Thurs., early AM or late PM and into/out of less-busy airports. You might get better fares if you travel to an airport that is not usually used by NJ residents. Booking early can work to your advantage, but not always. You have to have a price that you're willing to pay and then be ready to pull the trigger when you find seats that fit that price point. Once booked, stop looking at prices unless its an airline or airfare that offers no change fees.

Honestly, there is really no way to tell what the prices are going to do. We fly pretty consistently roundtrip Florida to NJ...during holiday, non holiday, mid-week etc. Sometimes we pay more for off peak. Thanksgiving flights last year were $200pp flying out the Wednesday before thanks giving (crazy cheap). But Christmas were over $500 for the dates I was looking (so we drove up instead). While this year our flight for Christmas were $280 each (a lot less and the same dates), but the Thanksgiving flights are more. I usually start looking early and when they drop to something in my budget I jump on it and as pp said, I don't look at it ever again (so I am not bummed if the price drops).

Look into airlines like Frontier and Spirit sometimes those have really cheap flights (even with the add on costs).

Use skyscanner to scope out your flights. We saved a ton on our 2017 trip because I stalked that site.

Also look at nearby airports.

When my husband is on spring break from his university, we drive 3 hours to New York to fly because the prices are half the cost of locally.

Look into flying out of Philly or bwi where jersey week won't effect prices

Also, if you like to fly Southwest, consider opening a Southwest card with bonus 50,000 points.

FreeDiningFanatic said:

Also, if you like to fly Southwest, consider opening a Southwest card with bonus 50,000 points.

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This. Or, consider opening both Southwest Personal Visas to get a total of 100,000 points and (almost) earn Companion Pass.

Our family (12 people) is flying "free" to Disney on Southwest points/Companion Pass from CC bonuses - it would have cost us over $3500 otherwise.

I feel your pain OP. If you are tied to the school schedule it's really tough. Any airfare is insane if you are flying over the holidays. We did a cruise out of San Juan over spring break and my brother, his girlfriend, and my parents flew midweek staying in San Jan a few days before and after the cruise and got round trip flights for close to $300. We flew in on a Saturday one day before the cruise and home on that Sunday and had to pay $570 pp. Ouch.

I have a Southwest credit card and do like the points for free airfare, so I do think that's a way to save some money if they have a good flight schedule for you. Always check though as they usually are the best bet for us, but not always.

I know I'm really tired of high airfares and that places I like with direct flights and more reasonable fares are influencing my picking them as vacation destinations. (Higher priced places airfare wise are getting bumped for me by other places.)

There are a lot of factors that go into pricing for airline tickets..expected profits, fuel costs, travel patterns (when people travel and how many people travel year to year), etc.which would make it difficult to predict pricing this far in advance.

Depending on what airline you are using you could look into either a branded-airline specific credit card or a higher rewards credit card that might give you cash back or that you can convert to airline miles.

Also when the time comes to book your airline tickets make sure to delete your cookies on your computer if you had been searching before and go into incognito mode (like for chrome browser)..airlines will jack up your rate if they can tell exactly what you've been searching for. Also there are times where there are only so many tickets being sold at a certain price so if you say you need 5 people you might play around with how many you plug in. Last May with SWA for our trip from MCI to AUS they had 3 tickets at a lower price left and the other 2 tickets we had to buy were at a higher price but if we plugged in 5 total the price given to us was just the higher priced one. That would mean separate reservations but could work if you have one parent on one and another parent on another (assuming it's two parents and 3 children in this family).

Like others have noted if you have other airports you can fly out of check their rates or for Orlando they have Sanford airport you could look into arriving into (though they wouldn't have DME if you were going to use that).

Try LGA and JFK... you usually get a better deal...
BUT you are locked in due to the cruise so expect to pay$$$ unless you fly a few days before and after...
for those with southwest... It does fly out of Newark however there is only one direct flight a day and this is new...otheriwse she will have a long long drive to LI and they only have a few flights a day.. It does go out of LGA but again connecting only and by far not cheap fro any airport in the NY area... but may get lucky???
Us NY area people fly Jet Blue...as they are big here.

mfly said:

Or, consider opening both Southwest Personal Visas to get a total of 100,000 points and (almost) earn Companion Pass.

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We did this a couple months ago. I was approved for both Southwest personal cards with 50k sign up bonuses. We charged about $5k to each card and paid it off each month. Each trip is about 10k points each way and one my family members flies free with me until next Dec. So, our family of 4 will have about 8 'free' flights for a total cost of $5.60 each way pp plus the two annual fees on the cards ($69 for the Plus card and $99 for the Premiere). On Southwest, especially for holiday travel, we book flights as soon as the schedule is released--much like stalking for Disney ADR and FP! If flights go down (often during the next fare sale) you can rebook the flight through their online change feature, and the extra points are redeposited in your account without any restrictions on future use.

We recently booked a cruise over Thanksgiving, after the flight booking window had already opened. We were able to get flights for 1/4 the number of points by flying home Monday morning, instead of Sunday. The kids will miss one day of school, but it also allows us to add MVMCP to the end of our non-WDW trip.

It really is a supply and demand thing. I will often come home on a Saturday/Sunday but will try to leave for vacation on Mondays to at least save on that leg. Sometimes that doesn't work out as well as people travelling for business may want Monday flights.

Also if it is Jersey Week, you may not save on a Wed. flight for example as some families make a long weekend of it, rather than take the whole week. The best thing to do is to check some historic prices and decide a budget. As others said you then watch and play around (if not sign up for one of those alerts). Other than miles I feel like there really aren't as many deals as there were years ago (and some airlines are incredibly inflexible, we found they were only offering us connecting flights a few times, nonstop was not eligible).

Another tip is make sure you know what fees go with what airline. Some have higher luggage fees and charge for everything on board. I just booked Jetblue not only for the price but as it was only $15 for the checked bag (vs the other airline $25), you get free snacks/drinks onboard, and they have decent entertainment for free.

You mentioned Jersey week, are you in NJ or just going that week? I'm in NJ and we airport shop. Before we were married my husband and I had booked trips flying out of JFK or LGA (he was in Queens) and flying home to EWR (I'm in Hudson county). Likewise I went to Vegas with a friend who lives further south so I parked my car at her place for the week and her husband drove us to Philly as it saved us over $200 RT for some reason. For FL I also don't mind Spirit out of AC, but I do that when I am with family or friends that live further south, I would not drive all the way there from Hudson county myself. As I'm a 15 min cab ride from EWR for our most recent trip we didn't airport shop as the flights were low enough that parking or transport would outweigh savings.

Mackenzie Click-Mickelson said:

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Also when the time comes to book your airline tickets make sure to delete your cookies on your computer if you had been searching before and go into incognito mode (like for chrome browser)..airlines will jack up your rate if they can tell exactly what you've been searching for......

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This is completely untrue.

lost*in*cyberspace said:

This is completely untrue.

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It is something that happens. Each airline has their own method for pricing.

Searching in incognito mode can help with the issue though this depends on the airline and their pricing method.

Btw I've experienced it multiple times with SWA and Delta.

ETA: Here's what I happened just over a month ago with Delta-
Booked tickets to HNL from KCI for September and once I closed my window on my computer and went back into Delta's website the flight I wanted went up. Deleted my cookies and history and went into incognito mode..checked again flight was back to what it was when I had just checked not even 3 mins before. Also my husband was checking the same flight on his computer (which he was at the time in a completely different state) and the price was the same as it was when I first checked.

Did the same thing on my phone..same result price went up then I deleted my cookies went into incognito mode on chrome on my phone and price went back down again (my phone is logged into my main gmail account and my computer was logged into a different gmail account). My computer was on the wifi network and my phone was on the cellular network.

My husband replicated the exact same thing as me above with the exception of using his cell phone. He got the exact same results as me. As I mentioned earlier he was in a completely different state at the time.