When do you book the plane?

[wisnieea]

How far in advance does everyone make plane reservations? Generally when do the prices decrease? On the other hand when do flights sell out?

It appears I will be flying airtran or southwest, out of buffalo airport.

 

[Wants2Live@WDW]

Southwest only books 4 months out at a time. I would suggest looking for specials or special rates through various places like travelzoo.com or travelocity. They have emails that can let you know of the best deals in your area. We book as early as possible for major holidays, and between 4 months down to 3 weeks out for other times of the year (within 2 weeks, the prices go up again historically for American. There are also last minute deals, but these are usually just meant for weekend getaways.)

Good luck!!

 

[simonkodousek]

I would start looking about 6-8 months in advance. However, we have found that Airtran and Southwest typically have good rates until about 3 weeks prior to the departure day, but that depends on the time of year, day of the week, and time of the day, you plan to travel.

 

[Missytara]

You will also see fares fluctuate during the week. When I booked mine on Airtran, it appeared as though the fares dropped Tuesday through Thursday, especially very early in the morning. It seems to be days when people are not thinking about booking their flights, which would tend to be more over the weekend, when the family is home.

I booked my flight at 6:30 am on a Wednesday and by the time I got in touch with my friends and they booked their flight at noon, it had gone up about $25.00.

We booked ours about 3-1/2 months ago, but we are flying out on Thanksgiving weekend.

 

[fuzzy164]

One word for SouthWest-"Ding" it's a great tool and will automatically let you know when a speacial is on from your chosen airport.
We have flown SW a few times from Buffalo and I found about 8 weeks before the prices drop( sometime a huge drop) and have had ding alert me.
I don't know if Jet Blue or AirTran have this option at their website.
You can remove the program from your computer afterwards, it's not spyware from what I can see and works very well.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Fuzzy164

 

[mindy5648]

I agreed Southwest Ding is great! We booked ours the first day of the change in dates through Southwest. I had first checked by trying to book only one ticket. The price was coming up at $250. When I tried to book 2 at the same time it was coming up with $275 for each. So we booked them seperately and got one at each price. The only way that it would go cheaper is if they had $99 each way and I really dont forsee that happening. There is also Bing.com that has a flight pricing forecaster
http://www.bing.com/travel/about/howAirPredictions.do

I have used it before it is pretty good too We had southwest gift cards so that is why we had to go through them

We ALWAYS book the flights first...no point in prepaying for a hotel room if you cant afford the ticket prices for check in

 

[antmaril]

I am traveling to Orlando on December 1st and made my air reservations a few days ago on Spirit Airlines. $134 r/t non-stop Detroit to Orlando. I've been watching the fares for months and pulled the trigger at $134.

 

[Tinkermom76]

I got my flight booked on Friday and I got on Westjet flying out of Toronto for $139 and back into Hamilton for $109. Westjet doesn't charge the outrageous charges that Air Canada does

We are leaving at the end of Nov

 

[newlife]

i always book my flights as soon as i can even if the price is high. i know this may seem odd with the way prices can and do fluctuate but i always fly southwest and my sons like to visit family and also fly southwest so if the prices drop i have a credit which i always use. last year i was able to knock off over 200 dollars off of my flight to vegas because of this.

 

[trac96]

we fly southwest from pittsburgh to orlando everytime. i always seem to book asap, and as previous poster said with southwest if they lower the fare you will be given a credit for the diference. this happened to us in april. however they are not just going to give the credit you need to keep checking prices of your flight and let them know.

 

[PoohsFan1]

We usually book our flights at about 3 months out. For our upcoming December trip my DH booked our flights about 5 months out. He found a really good deal on Cheaptickets.com. We are flying out of Chicago to MCO non-stop and he got us $143 R/T flying with Airtran. I do agree with PP that said to look for flights on Tuesdays. We only fly in and out on Tuesdays because we have found that that is the cheapest day to fly on.

 

[Karlzmom]

Book as early as possible. Its your hedge against higher rates. I know JETBLUE will offer you credit if the price goes down......mine just went up, up. up after I booked...it actually more than doubled

 

[Miaka]

I had been watching the flights rates go up and down for a couple weeks, I booked my flights AUgust first for our February flights, at the same time I had my friend book the Villa (we're going on a friends DVC points) so I knew the dates were available and everything matched up. so about 7 months for me.

 

[Missytara]

Poohsfan 1 - I was referring to the days you BOOK your flight, not the day you actually fly.

Fares fluctuate during the week; at least on Airtran. It just seemed like starting on Fridays and ending on Mondays, the same flight was higher, because families are probably all together and planning at the same time when to go, what to do, etc.

During the week, the fares would go down, and when I booked mine - between 6:30 am and the time my friends booked at noon, it had actually gone up about $30.00.