What is the trick?

[Best Aunt]

I assume you have checked both DFW and DAL. Different airlines at different airports.

I get emails from JetBlue (DFW) and Southwest (DAL). Currently they are having sales, but check out the exclusions.

From a Southwest email:
Purchase from June 5 through June 7, 2018, 11:59 p.m. in the respective time zone of the originating city. Domestic travel valid August 21 through December 12, 2018. Travel to/from San Juan, Puerto Rico valid September 5 through December 6, 2018. International travel valid August 21 through December 12, 2018. Domestic travel blacked out August 31, September 3, November 16-27, 2018. Domestic travel is not valid on Fridays and Sundays. Travel to Florida and Nevada and from Florida to Nevada is valid only on Sundays through Wednesdays. Travel from Florida and Nevada and from Nevada to Florida is valid only on Tuesdays through Fridays. Travel to/from San Juan, Puerto Rico is valid Monday - Thursday. International travel is valid only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Fares valid only on nonstop service. Displayed prices include all U.S. and international government taxes and fees. Points bookings do not include taxes, fees, and other government/airport charges of at least $5.60 per one-way flight. Fares not available to/from Albany, New York. Seats and days are limited. Fares may vary by destination, flight, and day of week and won't be available on some flights that operate during very busy travel times and holiday periods. Travel is available for one-way Wanna Get Away® fares. Fares may be combined with other Southwest Airlines® combinable fares. If combining with other fares, the most restrictive fare's rules apply. Sale fares may be available on other days of week, but that's not guaranteed. Fares are nonrefundable but may be applied toward future travel on Southwest Airlines®, as long as reservations are canceled at least ten minutes prior to the scheduled departure. Failure to cancel prior to departure will result in forfeiture of remaining funds on the reservation. Any change in itinerary may result in an increase in fare. Standby travel may require an upgrade to the Anytime fare depending on Rapid Rewards® tier status. Fares are subject to change until ticketed. Offer applies only to published, scheduled service.

JetBlue is book by June 6 for travel June 19 to August 29.

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

Sunday are one of the worst days to fly. You have people who are ending vacation plus business people traveling to reach their destinations for work on Monday's.

 

[a742246]

At those prices I would drive. Maybe I would stop at a midpoint and stay the night (New Orleans sounds great to me) or a beach area!

 

[NotUrsula]

The trick is not flying during Thanksgiving week. (It's also not the best time to visit WDW anyway; crowds are insane.)

 

[bumbershoot]

I simply see many posts talking about getting good deals and was hoping for insight on how to wrangle one for my family.

The insight on getting a good deal is to not travel that week.

That week is going to be painful enough, and then you’re multiplying by 8. Yikes

 

[ClapYourHands]

I guess my idea of price gouging differs from others- I wasn't trying to start a debate. I will quietly go back to my lurking status and keep my posts to myself. I simply see many posts talking about getting good deals and was hoping for insight on how to wrangle one for my family.

It's the internet, so sometimes tone is hard to convey, but I don't see anyone being nasty to you. People are trying to explain how airfare works. It's a constantly fluctuating market, and unless you understand how the market works, you can't take steps to beat the market.

Midweek flight are almost always cheaper than weekend flights. Flights are almost always higher around a holiday. The converse it true as well. Airlines drop their fares for unpopular days and inconvenient times. As flights fill up (or fail to fill up), airlines adjust their prices accordingly.

For most people, the date/time of travel is a key factor in getting cheaper fares. Flying weekend to weekend on the most traveled week of the year to one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country is going to be expensive. Your choice to fly only when the airlines have no incentive to offer discounts means that you're not likely to find great deals. You can try some of the tricks people have suggested (breaking your search up into smaller party sizes, using an airline that credits your account if prices dip - assuming you're willing to monitor the fares), and you might save some money that way. But without flexibility in flight scheduling, you probably won't find the kind of good deals you see people posting about.

Operating an airline is expensive, and many operate on very thin margins. Nobody complains about getting a super-low fare, but those may actually mean a loss for the airline. Airlines count on offsetting the losses of the low-demand times with the higher priced fares of the high-demand times. As a customer, I may want more low fares, but I understand why the airlines need to charge the high fares when they can get them. As customers, our options are to adjust either our expectations or our travel plans.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I guess my idea of price gouging differs from others- I wasn't trying to start a debate. I will quietly go back to my lurking status and keep my posts to myself. I simply see many posts talking about getting good deals and was hoping for insight on how to wrangle one for my family.

Whenever people talk about airline prices I always try to keep in mind market, dates, time including non-stop vs stops and number of passengers means quite a lot when comparing. And honestly with a variety of things on the DIS people don't tend to put all the details out there so you may be seeing "omg I got a great deal" but it ends up being something that would only work for that poster and not for you at all.

My market has different pricing than other markets. SWA is the number 1 airline as far as passengers at my airport but we are not a hub; flying non-stop is almost always cheaper option with SWA at my airport. The advice of checking for different numbers of passengers is a great one really. We've run into that with SWA when traveling with 5 passengers where we had to split it up. Also I would suggest going into a protected mode when searching (like Incognito mode on Chrome).

If you're at all flexible about dates I would at least play around with that. I don't fly other airlines nowadays other than primarily SWA and a few times with Delta but both of them have an ability to use low fare calendars (SWA) and flexible dates (Delta) which can help you see if it's just departure and arrival dates causing it to be that high. That being said flying around holidays tends to be expensive. As an example we flew back from NYC (Newark airport) on the 22nd of December and it cost my husband's company over $500 just to get him home (I was on Companion pass) because it was so close to Christmas plus Wanna Get Away fares had long been gone by that point.

Finally it just came out that airline ticket prices should be going up simply due to fuel costs and of course markets are going to vary on that. From Dallas to Orlando I don't know how much that would impact but I'm sure it still does to a part.

On the price gouging aspect. I do agree with others but I do also understand that from your viewpoint it's such a high cost and then when presented with finding out others have these great deals it makes you frustrated. I also think others may be speaking from a more frequent flyer standpoint whereas for you you mentioned you are not frequent fliers.

 

[NH-to-FL]

I simply see many posts talking about getting good deals and was hoping for insight on how to wrangle one for my family.

Most of the deals I have gotten were because I had the flexibility to travel when fewer people wanted to travel. We just booked cheap flights on Southwest during their "3 Day Fall Sale". Only available on certain days from certain airports but we were able to book a $99 flight on the Wednesday the week before Thanksgiving week. The only time I have gotten deals during Thanksgiving week was to fly on Thanksgiving day. In fact two years ago we flew down to Orlando on Thanksgiving day. The airport was about as quiet as I have ever seen it.

 

[cmwade77]

The trick is fly JetBlue and either buy the day they come out or wait for a sale. Also with such dates, if you can be flexible by a day or two, you could save $100+ per ticket, at 8 tickets, both ways that could add up to $1,600 in savings round trip.

Another trick is never search for more than one ticket at a time. If there is only one seat left at a discounted rate, then all of the tickets will be bumped up to the next rate. So while it can be more time consuming, if you book each of the 8 tickets separately, you can save a lot of money.

Also, use comparison sites like Kayak, Hotwire, etc. Make sure cookies are turned on and that you are not blocking websites from tacking your activity. The airline sites will see you have been looking at such sites and will often offer you lower rates. But likewise, also try checking in Imcognito Mode on Google Chrome (or Private Browsing on other browsers), you may score a better deal that way.

After the flights are book, sign up for refund alerts at Yapta as well.

Following these tips, we were able to book r li und trip for late January from Los Angeles to Orlando for under $300 per ticket with insurance and one checked bag included. We could have had slightly cheaper from a third party site, but then we have to pay full price for the checked bag and loose out on some other perks that we get when booking direct.