Need opinions please.

[disneyfam]

Out of curiosity I did a search on flights for the dates that we want to go in May out of the Philly airport. Now we have $300 worth of vouchers for Travelocity so we'll be booking a flight through them (that means we cant use Southwest).

We really want a direct flight (have a 2 and 4 yr old and the 2yr old will still be in a carseat) so that narrowed our airline down to USAirways. Found RT flights for $163. Boy are pickings slim when it comes to dates!! There are already dates that are not available or are sold out. And its 10 months away!

Would you go ahead and grab a flight now or would you wait to see if a cheaper flight appeared?

Cynde

 

[beccasmom]

$163.00 is not a bad fare. You might be able to do a little better, but not by much, especially if you can’t use SW or AirTran. You certainly have some time, but you do risk not gettting the seats you want and this is important when traveling with toddlers. And USAirways does have many non-stops from PHL, a lot more than Delta or other carriers.

If you’re comfortable with that fare, I would book it. Reportedly, fares are supposed to be increasing, so if that is true, you’d be ahead of the game. Also, if you are noticing a trend with sold-out dates, you may have just picked a really busy time to travel. If you can be flexible with your dates, that might help some. And, traveling at off-times helps – we took a 6:30 a.m. flight to Orlando two weeks ago (we also took a voluntary bump – I could not believe that so early a flight was overbooked) and flew out of Orlando at 7:30 a.m. The 6:30 a.m. flight was never very crowded in the past…..we’ve taken it many times because we like to be in Orlando early in the day. It is a big sacrifice, but may bring down the price a little.

And if the price goes down, you can always get a credit voucher. It is not as easy as it used to be, but it can be done.

 

[Brian Noble]

I'd grab it, too. There is limited upside to waiting, I think.