Do fares generally go up or down closer to departure?

[waltdisneyworlddreamer]

1st time flyer-- I drug my feet and missed out on $195 round trip. Now the fare has gone up $206 then $216 and now $219. Should I keep watching every day and hope it will drop or do you think it will just keep on raising??? We are going the first week of November.

 

[mkymouse4ever]

depends if I have bought my tix. If I have it they go down, if I wait, then they go up. Generally, I just give up and buy it so I know I get the times I need. I am time constrainted.

mky

 

[Dopey Sharon]

In my experience, our prices have always went up the closer the dates got.

When I can get air for $200 or less, for non-stop service at the times I want, I book it. I paid $153 pp for our December trip on Spirit.

 

[helenk]

The "cheap" seats seem to sell out pretty quickly. Sometimes the airlines will run sales, especially internet sales for certain dates.
What airline are you using? If you are using Southwest book it, when the rates go down you can get the lower rate and have a credit for a future flight.
My experience with airtran is that if you book with them and the rates go down you are out of luck...and they run periodic internet sales.
Other airlines will let you re-book for the lower rate, but charge you a fee to do so and then you really are not saving very much.
What I do, if the flight times that I really want are available and still within my budget I just bite the bullet and book.
If you want to wait a bit, sign up for fare watcher on travelocity, and sign up for e-mails from the airlines you want to book. When they have an internet sale you get an e-mail. With travel watcher you indicate what amount you want to pay and they will e-mail you when the tickets are that price....however you may not get the flight times you want.
Also, can you change your dates? Sometimes flying out or coming back on a different day can lower your price, you have to play around on the airlines websites a bit.

 

[waltdisneyworlddreamer]

We are going with Delta. There is pretty much only 1 departure time that really works great with our schedule. From what I have seen delta.com has the lowest price for this flight that I can find.

 

[fac]

It also depends on the time of the year.
Last year, I looked for the air tickets for my sister's family and found some suprising low price for the end of Aug.
Therefore when I decided to book the free dinning package this year, I made the WDW reservation before buying the tickets, because I believed the price of the ticket will go down. Indeed, the price did go down. But then after the sale starts, you would have to get it as early as you can.

Two things going for us are that
a. I talked DH into agreeing taking the auto-train as a new experience. In fact, I had a problem to talk him out of auto-train after I found out that I could pay around $460 for RT tickets. But auto-train becomes my backup plan.
b. Our vacation time is flexible, we can move up or down a day or two without too much problem. In the worse case, we travel on weekday.

 

[CdnDisneyFan]

My friend and I are flying NWA on Sept 17th to LAX, and noticed that the fare went down considerably, does NWA do anything like that? I wanted to ask here, before consulting my TA.

Thanks so much,

Jules

 

[NotUrsula]

Depends on what you mean by "closer." If you are in the habit of booking more than 6 months out, yes, they will probably get a bit cheaper, with the lowest fares usually happening somewhere in the 6-8 week window. Inside the 30 day window they go up, up again at 21 days, 14 days, and 7 days. Inside the 7 day window the only thing you can usually buy is unrestricted full fare.

Occasionally, if a flight is at really low capacity, an airline might advertise it at a really low fare for last-minute purchase during a period between 7 days and 48 hours out. (Note that SWA usually does NOT do this.) You can't count on this, but it does make for a nice surprise sometimes if all the planets line up for you!

Incidentally, fare increases are usually floated on Friday to run through the weekend, so your odds of finding those grab-it-now fare sales are better if you are shopping T-Th.

 

[ccw]

GREAT Delta fares available on certain flights first week of Nov. , under $90 rd. trip(at least from my airport)...check them out at www.delta.com. Some glitch in Travelocity system yesterday was doubling the price for same route/time! Maybe that's fixed by now but i always check airline's own site before booking anyway, just to be sure. Of course those great fares came out two days AFTER i booked at higher fare! Not unhappy though as it was the price i had decided I'd be satisfied with, especially to get specific travel times i preferred.

 

[waltdisneyworlddreamer]

I went ahead and bit the bullet and got the $219 airfare. Out of curiosity I keep checking back. The rates are up to $260 now. OK I'm not looking anymore.