How to get budget airfare???

[Cin]

My trip isn't for 5 months yet and I don't know when to buy airline tickets. The prices now are double what I paid last year for the same trip, so when do airlines drop their rates to sell empty seats? I want to be sure of a seat but I want the best price too. If I buy now to get assured of a seat, can I get a refund later when rates decrease and how do I do that? Just ask at the ticket counter or what? I get my tickets online.

 

[sam_gordon]

There is no "guaranteed" time frame for prices to drop. No airline offers a simple refund if the price drops from what you paid (unless you purchase a 'refundable' fare... usually MUCH more expensive). Some airlines (Southwest) will give you the difference in credit. Most airlines will charge a 'change' fee of ~$150. So if the price drops by $200 (per ticket), you can get some money back.

Airlines have/are cutting back on flights so the amount of empty seats is diminishing.

There are folks who say the best time to buy is at the '3 month' mark or the '4 month' mark. Again, there's no guarantee. The best suggestion I've heard is to buy when you can afford to, then don't look at prices again. Have a 'plan b' (driving?) in mind so if air fares don't drop, you have a transportation plan.

 

[njmom47]

I get emails from Bookingbuddy and other sites about fares for my "someday" vacation. I put in my flight information and when the price goes down, they email me. There are also sites that have records of airfare prices for travel (if your dates are flexible), one of which is Expedia Trend Tracker. Also, you should try and book airfare Tues or Wed because that seems to be the cheapest time, rather than weekends. HTH.

 

[emilymad]

I like the Bing Travel fare predictor. It isn't fool proof but it helps give you a general idea to wait or buy now.

I also fly Southwest whenever possible. Our flights for September just dropped $62 this week. You do have to check Southwest every day.

Airfarewatchdog.com is also a good website.

 

[TaraPA]

There is no "guaranteed" time frame for prices to drop. No airline offers a simple refund if the price drops from what you paid (unless you purchase a 'refundable' fare... usually MUCH more expensive). Some airlines (Southwest) will give you the difference in credit. Most airlines will charge a 'change' fee of ~$150. So if the price drops by $200 (per ticket), you can get some money back.

Airlines have/are cutting back on flights so the amount of empty seats is diminishing.

There are folks who say the best time to buy is at the '3 month' mark or the '4 month' mark. Again, there's no guarantee. The best suggestion I've heard is to buy when you can afford to, then don't look at prices again. Have a 'plan b' (driving?) in mind so if air fares don't drop, you have a transportation plan.

This.

DH & I fly frequently so I'm constantly watching fares. In the last 6 months I've not seen much movement or change in rates - other than to go up. I think the days of deep price drops are gone. Pick a fare you can live with & when it hits that, pay it!

I also don't know of any airlines that refund your money if the fare does drop. Some will offer you a credit to use on their airline within a certain timeframe, but not a cash refund.

 

[Pakey]

Tuesdays are the best days for fares. Do not buy online airfare on the weekends; that is when they are at their highest. Also, your travel dates can make a huge difference as most people travel on weekends. Try using a Wednesday through a Tuesday for example and see if that reduces the rate.

Airfare is high to book during summer months, regardless of your travel time. I'm waiting for October-November to start shopping for my Peru flights for February.

 

[carebee21]

We're traveling about the same time as you. I'm not expecting to buy my tickets until Oct/early November. I've been pricing out the flights and for us, we have a "buy" price. If I see the flights go to $300/with taxes and fees or $350/with taxes and fees for a non stop flight, we wil buy and not look back. The prices may plunge a bit more or go up, but once I buy with a price I'm happy with, I stop looking (unless I use southwest, as they offer the refund vouchers)

We have an alert set up with airfarewatchdog and will check kayak and southwest every morning probably starting in Mid Sept until we find a price we're happy with. But we also have a backup. Southwest would be $450/person and the price doesn't seem to fluctuate too much until you get within a month of the flight, so that's our backup plan in case we don't find anything else.

 

[Crazy4Disney06]

I like to sign up for emails from Airfarewatchdog.(you know what). They send you emails several times a week and a lot of the time the fare they have is unadvertised so placed like priceline or expedia may not have them come up on their search engine yet.

 

[arthur06]

In December when we went to WDW, we got a direct flgiht at $79 One Way. I just booked our flgihts for our Sept trip and the best I could do was $129 One Way.

We have been lucky to get many great deals in the past, and unfortunately those days might be numbered.

 

[jsmith]

definately use an airfare monitor-and check someplace like Kayak frequently. I rarley buy tickets more than 60 t0 90 days in because my husband is in the military and im a defense contractor and its just unwise to spend that kind of money more than a couple of months ahead-but twice using Kayak to monitor i have gotten phenominal deals that i bought way in advance. Most recently i bought tickets in June for our November trip to Hawaii. We have been going to Hawaii about every three years for almost 20 years. the least i had ever paid for round trip tickets from Denver to Honolulu previously was $520 pp. By using kayak i happened to catch a sale when United and Contential mergerd and got them for $435 per person ( that was the actual cost of the flight including the taxes and fees). so Keep checking-and once you buy-dont look back-stop checking so you dont get buyers remorse