United Airlines:HUGE fare increase.Can this be?

[jerseygal]

$130 increase in a roundtrip fare that I had been watching for quite some time..
I am accustomed to seeing "incremental" increases as a certain date gets closer, but REALLY?
RIDICULOUS! Literally, $130 increase when I "priced" the roundtrip fare the next day!
Think I will play the "waiting" game at this time....Trip isn't till beginning of June anyway, so I will take my chances.. Maybe United will COME TO ITS SENSES when the seats go unbooked!
Anyone have the same experience with United in the last couple of days?
THANKS in advance!

 

[Dacky619]

I've seen those increases and decreases in almost every airline we have used. For this current trip, we are flying SW. We are using points but the r/t cost went from $260 pp when I booked originally, to $415 pp, then it dropped to $230 pp (we rebooked), and now it is about $275 pp. It is frustrating, but all you can do is keep watching for them to fall to a point that you are comfortable buying.

 

[Ranger111]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/11/pf/best-time-to-buy-airfare/

The above story hit the news yesterday....

There have been a lot of stories about air fares in the past couple of months, fuel prices are way down, but air fares are up.

Consensus is that the seats are selling at the high prices and that demand is continuing to increase at a healthy clip, so prices will probably stay high, at least through the summer.

 

[Yellowjj]

June is the start of summer. Peak season. I wont hold out much hope for prices to drop in that period.

 

[TxTiggergal]

$130 increase in a roundtrip fare that I had been watching for quite some time..
I am accustomed to seeing "incremental" increases as a certain date gets closer, but REALLY?
RIDICULOUS! Literally, $130 increase when I "priced" the roundtrip fare the next day!
Think I will play the "waiting" game at this time....Trip isn't till beginning of June anyway, so I will take my chances.. Maybe United will COME TO ITS SENSES when the seats go unbooked!
Anyone have the same experience with United in the last couple of days?
THANKS in advance!

A United fare that I have been watching has gone up today, but only by $7.00, so more like the incremental increases you speak of. Our trip isn't until mid August and I was waiting for Southwest to release their prices for my dates before I booked anything.

Hopefully your fare will improve before you must book! That's just maddening how it jumped so much in one day.

 

[dis_guy]

I fly UAL fairly regularly and I can't really remember the last time I saw some empty seats. Occasionally an E+ seat goes unfilled but economy and business/first are full. As well I often check flight status for upcoming trip routes to get an idea of how they are meeting scheduled times and usually look at the seat maps then. Most flights are full, so I guess someone is buying those fares.

 

[runsandjumps]

I looked at airfare five days ago and then yesterday. Price went from $420 to $558 and up from there. Sad

 

[lost*in*cyberspace]

$130 increase in a roundtrip fare that I had been watching for quite some time..
I am accustomed to seeing "incremental" increases as a certain date gets closer, but REALLY?
RIDICULOUS! Literally, $130 increase when I "priced" the roundtrip fare the next day!
Think I will play the "waiting" game at this time....Trip isn't till beginning of June anyway, so I will take my chances.. Maybe United will COME TO ITS SENSES when the seats go unbooked!
Anyone have the same experience with United in the last couple of days?
THANKS in advance!

All airlines constantly adjust their prices; UA is no exception. These adjustments can certainly be $100 or more.

If you're traveling in June, you should have purchased your tickets some time ago. It's unlikely ticket prices will drop. Believe me, by the time this flight goes in June, there will be very few unsold seats, if any.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

It could just be temporary - sometimes prices go up for the weekend and then come back down. When I book a flight whether it's personal or business I check it every single day for any adjustments (since it's always Southwest and we can rebook.) I've literally seen one way flights jump up over $100 on southwest only to come right back down 1 week or even a few days later. I'd say 95% of the flights I've watched over the past 5 years have continued to move up and down until about 6 weeks before the trip. Obviously by waiting you risk it going up more but nobody really knows what will happen. If you decide to wait and you don't see this come back down by Tuesday or Wednesday next week though you may want to cut your losses.

 

[galaxygirl76]

I watched the prices closely for our trip last November, and didn't see any big price changes up or down in that time period which is why we ended up flying with Allegiant because they dropped to a price we couldn't say no to even if that meant that we had to rent a car(and including the renting a car they were still cheaper than everyone else flying out of Cedar Rapids). We will most likely not use Allegiant this time because my husband did not enjoy having to drive around wdw and wants to fly into Orlando International so we can take the Magical Express and more importantly, also because they only fly on Monday and Friday out of CR.

 

[Minnesota!]

We booked our tickets (on SWA) for just under or just over $100/ow. The same o/w ticket is over $300.

We are just 38 days out now so I doubt it will come down.

June is typically one of the more expensive times to fly...so I am not surprised it jumped so much...and it just might stay there.

 

[dis_guy]

jerseygal, I'm assuming you're flying from New Jersey, perhaps EWR? A fare checking app I have (On the Fly) is showing Jetblue flights for around 224 and United ones around 240 for the first half of June. I have no idea if this is a reasonable price for the route. It does go up quite a bit for the second half, though. Keep checking, and good luck!

 

[TXAKDisneyFan]

$130 increase in a roundtrip fare that I had been watching for quite some time..
I am accustomed to seeing "incremental" increases as a certain date gets closer, but REALLY?
RIDICULOUS! Literally, $130 increase when I "priced" the roundtrip fare the next day!
Think I will play the "waiting" game at this time....Trip isn't till beginning of June anyway, so I will take my chances.. Maybe United will COME TO ITS SENSES when the seats go unbooked!
Anyone have the same experience with United in the last couple of days?
THANKS in advance!

We're flying from NY and prices seemed to be fluctuating a lot. They had been in the mid $300s, and then the other day went to $230 so we bought. If you search on kayak, they have the price trend on the upper left hand side of the screen and it'll say whether it's recommended to buy or not.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

OP, I'm assuming you're flying out of EWR but if you can stand a bit of a drive, Philly always has lower prices. My brother would normally use EWR but drives an hour to PHL just for the savings.
Also did you try Spirit out of AC? or Frontier out of Trenton or Wilmington? Wilmington is really just over the Delaware Memorial Bridge so it may not be the closest airport but I don't mind a little drive if it's for huge savings. Heck, we've even driven to Baltimore for incredible fares on SW but that was long time ago. I'd rather drive a little than all the way to FL. If the cheaper fares make our vacation do-able, it's worth it. jmho

 

[AliceIn]

I got our round trip tickets for our 5/30-6/7 tickets in mid-January. Our round trip price was $281. I just looked at what it would cost had I waited until now, and to book the exact same flights, the cost is now $628!!!!!

There are still cheap flights to be had for our dates, but the times are not as great. We're currently on a 6 am flight out, and a 4 pm flight back. To get the same $282, we'd have to leave home 12 hours later, and leave Disney 9 hours earlier. That's losing nearly a full day!

 

[jerseygal]

THANKS ALL! Flying to Savannah, not Orlando! Will KEEP CHECKING! CANNOT WAIT for some warm sun in Hilton Head Island!!!

 

[jerseygal]

SNAGGED a good fare finally on United to Savannah! Persistence pays off! CAN'T WAIT till spring!

 

[dis_guy]

SNAGGED a good fare finally on United to Savannah! Persistence pays off! CAN'T WAIT till spring!

Yay!! Yes, indeed persistence does (eventually) pay off. For our Nov trip I bought at what seemed like a good price, and sure enough it went down even further. Right now, I have an offer to upgrade to first for about the same money as Economy Plus seats would be. Hmm.....