Another Poll: Book Now for October or Wait It Out?

[annnewjerz]

I need some opinions from all of the wonderful DISers on the Transportation board.

A week or two ago, I saw awesome fares on both Airtran and Southwest out of Philadelphia (like $140-$150 round trip). This week, the fares have gone up out of Philadelphia, but they still have $155 from Baltimore.

Philadelphia is 35 minutes from us, Baltimore is over 2 hours and it's a 7:00am flight. If we don't get airfare for $150(ish) or less per person, we'll be driving.

What would you do? Book now while we are guaranteed the low fare---or tough it out and wait for lower SW and Airtran fares to be released from PHL?

 

[dacky041208]

I had a similar situation looking at airfare for our trip in a few weeks. I purchased SW out of BWI at 54 per person (each way). PHL hasn't come close to hitting that, but I figured if they did, I could easily rebook out of PHL and just pay any difference in the ticket price. If you like SW, I'd book out of Baltimore if you like the price, then just keep watching and see if you can change it. For us, even at the cheapest I've seen the Philly flights, we are saving 100 dollars plus flying to MCO in the morning and flying back in the evening (cheapest philly flights were opposite, losing vacation time). Now if you wanted to fly Airtran, I'd think about it a little longer since you can't change flights as easily.

 

[MagiKitty]

I voted to wait for better fares from Philly. Two hours and a morning flight can cause some serious planning issues for me. If you stay at a hotel the night before, with parking and extras, your cheaper flights at BWI will add up.

I usually start looking for flights months in advance also, plug info in at Yapta and just keep watching. Also, people seem to think that Tuesdays and Wednesdays offer the cheapest fares.

That being said, I'm booked already for my September flight. Was watching flights for about a month, saw some really cheap flights on Delta and booked them. The fares may go down in the future, but I don't have to worry about those now---just have to worry about ADRs!

 

[JoyG]

You can search the history of fares from your city at www.farecompare.com. I would search the history to see what the typical fares are to see if the ones you're seeing now are on the low or high side.

Usually, the best fares don't come out until 3-4 months before departure. So I would probably wait. However, I've been watching fares for my August trip since January. We finally bought our tickets at the end of May and it was the same price I saw for the first time in January. So waiting didn't help (or hurt) us.