When do you buy your flight tickets?

[Pdollar88]

I am looking on buying a ticket for my January 31-February 4 solo trip. I feel like I usually buy my ticket just a little too early, although I still get relatively good prices.

When do you typically buy your flight ticket? Do you have a specific set of flights picked out, or are you flexible?

I am pretty sure I want to fly on two specific flights because it will maximize my time at WDW. It's currently sitting at 229 basic economy, 279 if I upgrade to economy. Thoughts on whether I should go ahead and book, since I want this specific set of flights, or wait?

 

[gharter]

Unfortunately, we fly out of a smaller airport with 2 flights a day and a small jet to the hub. We usually have out tickets purchased by the 6 month mark at the latest. When the seats are gone, they're gone. Buying early, also gets us the connecting flights we want. For us, I haven't seen the prices go up or down much by waiting.
We could drive anywhere from 1 to 2 hours, but the prices are not much different. Driving 3 1/2 hours is a big drop in price, but thats a lot of travel time both ways.

 

[bastraker]

We usually buy our tickets 6-8 weeks out. Our schedules are too busy for anything earlier than that. I just bought our tickets going into MCO for Thanksgiving 10 days ago. Still haven't purchased the flight back to EWR yet. Maybe this week.

I also find that is a good time for the best price.

 

[Shanti]

I tend to buy as soon as I know for sure that we're going to travel. For me, flight experience trumps price. It's more important for me to get us nonstop flights, flights at the ideal time, and/or good seats on the plane than it is to get the very lowest price from point A to point B. It helps that it's usually only two of us traveling, or at most, three.

 

[tnolan]

We usually buy our flights right after we put down the deposit on the room at Disneyworld. Normally, the sooner you can buy the flights, the cheaper they are.

 

[sam_gordon]

I also find that is a good time for the best price.

Unless you'd been tracking the prices since they've been released, how do you know that time period is the best?

 

[seashoreCM]

You don't. But if there are lots of unsold seats when it gets close to the date of the flight then you might guess that the airline will reduce the ticket price.

There are plenty of good reasons to buy airfare early. Once I found a pattern where for a particular popular date the few cheapest seats offered at IPO went within minutes and the price did not go that low again all the way until flight day. I managed to snag those low priced seats one year.

But for those folks who buy early solely for the sake of buying early or solely to get that part of their planning out of their way, if they were to wait much longer before buying then that will increase the chance that there will be a lot of seats unsold until late in the game and therefore increase the chance of a fare sale later.

 

[sam_gordon]

But for those folks who buy early solely for the sake of buying early or solely to get that part of their planning out of their way, if they were to wait much longer before buying then that will increase the chance that there will be a lot of seats unsold until late in the game and therefore increase the chance of a fare sale later.

But waiting ALSO increases the chance that more seats will sell, causing the price to go up.

And no it is almost impossible to tell how many unsold seats there are on a given flight. Seat maps only tell you how many seats are ASSIGNED, not how many are SOLD. With the advent of "Basic Economy" where you can get a cheaper fare by not selecting your seat, a lot of "available' seats don't mean the flight isn't almost sold.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

For Disney, since we always know far ahead that we are going, we buy as soon as Southwest releases their fares. We find them to be the cheapest.

When flying to other places. I just watch and watch until I see a price that I can live with and then I buy. That's usually in the 4-6 month range (closer to 6 months).

 

[NH-to-FL]

We fly Southwest. When we know our travel dates in advance we will book as soon as Southwest opens the window. Next we will watch for sales. We bought our November tickets during a"Fall Sale" in July. It is only occasionally that we wait to pick a date and then we look at mid week to get a lower fare. Thankfully we usually have flexibility.

I just booked tickets for the spring as I saw comments here in DISboards that said spring flights were filling up. Sure enough I did find quite a few sold out non stops but with a bit of date flexibility I found a mid week non stop for $117 one way.

This year our tickets have ranged between $105 and $124, one way.

 

[Chrislovesdisney]

We fly Jet Blue and usually book as soon as they are available. I like to know the booking is done and I’ve never really seen them go down. But I work in the schools and never fly at unpopular times. It’s always peak for me.

 

[_19disnA]

Normally, the sooner you can buy the flights, the cheaper they are.

I agree. Airlines only have so many of the lowest price tickets on each flight, once they sell out, they are gone. Airlines discount tickets they don't think will sell and during most holidays is peak travel time so they can usually sell out their flights. You can take a chance on a non-holiday travel and hope the airline offers a special, but certainly no guarantee. I have no idea how some 3rd party websites claim they can 'predict' when there will be future sales on tickets. Doubt airlines will tell them or provide any type of inside information.