September Flights

[DVC_Corrys]

Any advice on flying in September. We have not booked out tickets here in CA and the prices seem pretty high still (300). When do tickets become the cheapest??? Anyone purchased yet....

 

[focusondisney]

Hi! While I'm no airfare expert, we have vacationed in Sept. for the last few years. I usually book Southwest in May & get the best prices. I have always watched for lower fares after I booked & rarely saw anything better. This year I saw a great price on Jetblue in March so I booked them (SW wasn't out yet). Anyway, I have been watching both Jetblue & SW since to see how I did price wise. The jetblue is up about $40 each. I haven't seen the SW price as low as I booked on Jetblue yet, for my prefered flights (early AM direct down & direct flight late return) . So, I'm beginning to think that even with the bad economy & travel down, the airlines are not going to go rock bottom this summer. I would book what you can live with at this point & try to get a refund/ credit if prices go down. Hopefully airfare won't stop your vacation! Good Luck!!

 

[tebookie]

Tickets are still pricey here (Northeast) too. I haven't purchased yet. I am still holding out for a good deal. At this rate anything under $200 would be a good deal for us. I think the days of flying for $130 round trip are gone.

 

[frannn]

Haven't booked flights home from Orlando in Sept yet....guess we're not coming home...ever . I can't see spending the 179 one way Jetblue wants, so if they don't become a bit more reasonable soon, they will lose our family's business to another airline.

 

[DVC_Corrys]

When is the best time for Sept Flights? I didn't see any great rates in May.

 

[blissventure]

When is the best time for Sept Flights? I didn't see any great rates in May.

I book quite a bit of travel, and airfares are just more expensive these days than they used to be. We are booked for our flight in Oct, and it's gone up since we booked 2 months ago. (Only 40.00 pp, but hey, that 80 bucks for us.)

It's hard to time these things. Good luck to you as you make your decision.

 

[PolyPineapple]

The past few years we have traveled to WDW in September and found the best fares booking in March/April. This year we have not monitored the fares closely since we used Delta frequent flyer miles to go, and JetBlue reward passes for the return.

A lot of airlines are cutting back on flights due to the economy. Instead of cutting fares to fill planes, it's cheaper for them to cancel undersold flights and move folks to another flight to fill it up. Unfortunately this means fewer bargains.

A cool web site I like to use to monitor fares is bing.com (used to be farecast). You can set up alerts which will monitor airfare for your trip and email you the daily fares. You can compare multiple airlines based on what's important to you - price, schedule, etc.- and they have a fare predictions based on historical cost data. Best of luck getting a good fare!

 

[thebeesknees]

I feel your pain! I priced our trip back in March and thought we'd be able to get tickets from Denver for under $250 each, but it's been about $270-$280 every day when I check Sidestep and Hotwire, and Priceline just laughed at me when I tried to name my price. Then, the other night, my husband tried Hotwire again, and a $194 price popped up. I heard they post their new flight prices on Wednesday nights. We went ahead and booked it right away. Got lousy flight times, but I guess the $$ we saved will help us feel better when we are sitting there in the airport exhausted! I don't know if the price was a fluke or not. When I looked at the same itinerary directly with the airline, the price was $338, and by the next morning, Hotwire was back up to $268 again.

 

[kaytieeldr]

$300 isn't unreasonable. It works out to five cents a mile round trip, or ten cents a mile one way (approximately).

 

[ms.ojo]

I'm still waiting too! We're flying Wed ret'g on Tues and those are typically lower fare travel days. We go this time of year quite frequently. For us, SWA started at $116, went up, went down to $99 (which I almost bought) then stayed at $101 for several wks and is now at $111. That's good news! Because now I expect they'll offer a deal at $79 any day. LOTS of ppl aren't travelling. But airlines are hopeful to fill seats at an ok price. Hey, I can wait (just have no nails left! LOL)

So, if it drops to $89 will I buy? Will I wait for lower? I can't really count on credits as we won't be flying again in the next 12 mths. But do i dare hold out for something under $70 that might never come???? ugh.... waiting waiting waiting.

 

[byrd328]

We are flying mid september from Philly. I purchased in April for 120 round trip. I wanted to wait it out, but with gas prices going back up, I thought I would play it safe. Can't get much cheaper than $59 each way. My same flights are running over 250 now.

 

[Corryn]

A cool web site I like to use to monitor fares is bing.com (used to be farecast). You can set up alerts which will monitor airfare for your trip and email you the daily fares.

Bing.com? It looks like a search engine...
There was a site I used to go to and it alerted you every time your chosen website updated or changed their site. This was awesome for price watching. I got a new computer and forgot the website name. Anyone remember?

As far as September fares go, we usually book as soon as fares come out. This year we didn't, so I monitored SW daily. Last week I logged on and got $89 one way going down. Return fares were $119, so I chose not to book. Now they're up to $189 or something like that! I'm prayin' for a miracle! LOL

 

[mousemom11]

2009 seems to be quite the anomaly for airfare. The airlines still seem to be focusing on summer airfare sales. I've been following airfares pretty closely since January for our November trip, and haven't seen any fall sales yet (except for Europe). However, the price of oil is climbing, so who knows whether or not they will give us much in the way of fall sales. If they do happen, I would guess that we'll probably start seeing Sept-Nov sale prices in July or August.

 

[ms.ojo]

Yahoo! We're going to Disney. I found good airfare on SWA for Sept/Oct!!! And look at the difference depending upon the day of the week!!!

family of 4 rnd trip from BDL:

Wed -> Tues $79 $79 total w/ taxes = $717 PURCHASED

Tues -> Mon $79 $113 =$957

Sat -> Sat $220 $182* =$1693 (have to take earlier flight home or would be $260 = $2005!!)

Sun -> Sun $111 $152 =$1137

These were wanna get away fares not Dings!

 

[HRCCrazy]

Any advice on flying in September. We have not booked out tickets here in CA and the prices seem pretty high still (300). When do tickets become the cheapest??? Anyone purchased yet....

Just keep checking, and maybe adjust the time your looking at, in 20 flights all but 1 was the red eye, this trip I found the day flights way cheeper, $99.00 each way from Phoenix on US Air, with having to add a night I still save over $ 150.00 from the red eye flight

 

[10_Kyle_10]

Tickets are still pricey here (Northeast) too. I haven't purchased yet. I am still holding out for a good deal. At this rate anything under $200 would be a good deal for us. I think the days of flying for $130 round trip are gone.

We booked our Flights back in March and got Jet blue on Sept. 14th-Sept. 18th (Boston to MCO) for $368; two people...its just over $400 with the taxes. We were happy with this considering its right around what we paid last year and didn't want to risk waiting. I still keep an eye on them cause Ive heard you can get the difference back in vouchers but it has gone up about $70 since we booked! Good Luck.