Please Tell Me US Air Prices Will Drop Soon

[Bullseye]

I agree with your approach. While this method may not get you the absolute rock bottom price, your peace of mind and meeting your time needs is worth something, too. Besides, prices on everything else go up and I don't mind paying a little more each year.


By the way, most people will tell you to buy at a price you find acceptable and stop looking. Good advice but I never take it. Even when I've bought at a higher price than I've wanted, the flights we need have never come down in price and we buy as soon as we can in most cases. True, you might get a better fare a few weeks out but on a route to a warm place during the winter, those flights always fill up and it's just a matter of when they do. It's even harder over Christmas or March Break season.

Yeah, it's great to get great deals on airfare, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and pay a bit more to get the flights that you really need or want.

Sorry for the long-ish post!

Amen to that brah
Knowing how quickly things (Resorts, ADRS, Flights, FP+) can book up for a WDW vacation, I like to get my "ducks all lined up in a row" as early as possible. I suspect airlines do add additional fights at later dates and prices do tend to go down. Nevertheless, I just want to have those flights checked off my vacation to-do list as quickly as I can

So the only thing I have left to do now is to secure a good mini-van rate and book some FP+

 

[lisamarie12]

I know what you mean. We are planning for July and prices are so high it makes me ill. Southwest is coming at around $1200 RT for 3 of us. Even Allegiant will be $950- $1000 ish with bags and seat selection and then we cant use Magical express. So any cost savings are really small. We fly from Missouri (Kansas City, St. Louis or Springfield is fine) and airfare used to be cheap from the Midwest to Florida. I am pretty sure we paid about $250-$300 PP when DH and I went to Fort Lauderdale last year and we did not get a particularly amazing bargain. Southwest does have good non stop flights from St Louis now, but the cost is outrageous. I have checked all kinds of travel sights. Ugh.

 

[turkey1031]

Isn't southwest having a sale right now?

 

[jhaig]

Just checked this morning - Elmira-Philly $236, Philly-MCO $351, total $587, will be over $600 after taxes and fees. $1800 bucks for the three of us.

We paid no more than $300 each of the last 4 years. Madness.

I may bail on US Air.

 

[jakeybake]

Just checked this morning - Elmira-Philly $236, Philly-MCO $351, total $587, will be over $600 after taxes and fees. $1800 bucks for the three of us.

We paid no more than $300 each of the last 4 years. Madness.

I may bail on US Air.

$1,800 for three people is outrageous. I would totally bail on US Air if I were you. Even if you had to drive to another city where an airport was near it would cost you much less to stay over night if need be.

Our flight out of Boston was $300 cheaper on Wednesday than Thursday. The Bounceback offer we got starts on Thursday so I had to book the package then, even though we have always gone Wednesday to Wednesday.

So I booked the flight on Wednesday and just booked an extra night at the resort (room only). We won't have park passes and our free dining won't kick in but I would rather pay an extra $300 to Disney for the extra day then to just give it away to JetBlue for the exact same flight a day later. Figure we can eat counter service, hang by the pool and hit Downtown Disney on our first day, then check in for our BounceBack first thing in the morning.

Jay

 

[jakeybake]

Just booked my Southwest flights from Chicago to MCO for June. Came out to be $389 per person round trip which is about $90 more per person than I've ever paid before. I've read that the best time to book a flight cost-wise is like 6 or 7 weeks before, but I have no patience for that .

I hate to throw money down the drain by not waiting a little longer but I also want to make sure I get a flight on the days I need to travel. Who knows maybe you wait too long and prices don't drop

I hate the stress of playing the waiting game, hoping the fares go down. I always give myself a number that is reasonable and if it gets near it I book it. We travel down to WDW the last week of August so I want my airfare in place by the end of January the latest so I can focus on other things like ADR's, FP+ etc. when those booking windows open.

Jay

 

[DebbieB]

Just checked this morning - Elmira-Philly $236, Philly-MCO $351, total $587, will be over $600 after taxes and fees. $1800 bucks for the three of us.

We paid no more than $300 each of the last 4 years. Madness.

I may bail on US Air.

Unless you are buying separate tickets, a ticket Elmira to Orlando may not be the sum of the two flights. They could price it more or less. I pulled up random dates for September on their website, it shows $460 roundtrip, including taxes.

 

[katallo]

We went to Orlando the same week last March. BWI to MCO was around $300.00 RT. This year, $585.00. Makes no sense expect we lost the competition with Air Tran. Several family members are going and are now driving. There are 5 in one family and it would be almost $3,000. It's amazing flying mid week costs 200 RT and weekends are so much higher. Sadly, we all work and mid week is not always possible.

 

[karly05]

I hate the stress of playing the waiting game, hoping the fares go down. I always give myself a number that is reasonable and if it gets near it I book it. We travel down to WDW the last week of August so I want my airfare in place by the end of January the latest so I can focus on other things like ADR's, FP+ etc. when those booking windows open.

Jay

Agreed, I hate the waiting game, too, and I do the same thing of picking a number I'd like to get to and booking when I at least get close.

I don't like to book too early, though, because I feel like the plane ticket is the one thing it is really hard (if not impossible) to cancel. Park ticket I can save for a later trip, room only res I can cancel any time up to about a week out, but once I have that plane ticket, I figure I'm stuck.

I read a Frommer's travel column a couple of months back that said for best rates, book your flight between 100 days and 50 days before your trip (which is pretty much what I was doing already, anyway). I'm in the window now, and have been watching my preferred carrier (AA) and flights for months. All of a sudden today, AA dropped the starting price for my outbound flight to $350, which is good - but it's an extra $90 now for the return flight I want. At least I know the prices will move, and there are still enough seats showing, I can wait this out. But this is by far the least fun part of planning.