Airline Ticket advice
I'm trying to fly my daughter from Utah to SC in August so we can spend some time together. Unfortunately it less than 30 days from now and the ticket prices are AWFUL. Is it EVER cheaper to wait til the last minute (since we are flexible on dates)? |
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| Do airlines still do stand by? Or maybe some of the online places that I can't remember the names of. |
| I fly/or buy airline tickets between Florida/Michigan quite often. I usually buy and get the best deals on Northwest's own website.
Prices usually go down on Wednesdays. The cheapest tickets are travel time Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, I believe staying over a Saturday brings the price down also. Usually the lowest price you will probably get is 21 days from departure. Just keep checking the airline every day, the prices fluctuate daily. Good luck! |
| Thanks, I knew about the Tuesday flying and Sat stay over. Didn't know prices changed on Wednesday. I'll keep checking til next wed and see what happens.
Do you think the airline sites themselves are cheaper than places like travelocity????? |
Tasker's Mom wrote: Thanks, I knew about the Tuesday flying and Sat stay over. Didn't know prices changed on Wednesday. I'll keep checking til next wed and see what happens.
Do you think the airline sites themselves are cheaper than places like travelocity????? That has been my exerpience for where I usually fly. Check them out, all the flight infor is on their web page. One other piece of info....IF you call the airline and buy the tickets through them, where you talk to a real person, they have a service charge. So you are best to buy off the computer if you can. |
| I've bought a couple of tickets here lately, and kayak.com is by far the best site so far for finding tickets, I haven't been able to find them any cheaper for the dates I've put in, and believe me, I've spent a LOT of time looking for the best possible prices. And flying mid week is usually the cheapest, but not always. Good luck. |
| kayak.com was actually the cheapest I have found so far, thanks!! No to decide whether to BUY now or check for a few days......... It appears that Wed to Wed is the cheapest. |
| Also check out the last minute deals on cheaptickets.com or travelzoo.com
I would call the airline too. If your dates are flexible they may be able to find you a great rate. |
bestdogsx4 wrote: Do airlines still do stand by? Or maybe some of the online places that I can't remember the names of.
They supposidy still have standby, however, all the flights are so overbooked now, that even people holding tickets get bumped  |
| Interesting note...... I've check prices several times today and it seems like the price for the same ticket changes from one hour to the next, CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
| Brian just bought our tickets to hawaii...and we dont go till april of 2008......he watches them go up and down and buys at what he thinks is going to be the lowest price.
Hawaiian airlines wont book a couple at the same time so he did his, went to do mine and the price had gone up by $50.00....in a matter of minutes...so he didnt book mine till this morning....it went back down to $360.00......now my question is this....am i sitting alone or next to him????? I need a hand to hold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
Darcy wrote: Hawaiian airlines wont book a couple at the same time so he did his, went to do mine and the price had gone up by $50.00....in a matter of minutes...so he didnt book mine till this morning....it went back down to $360.00......now my question is this....am i sitting alone or next to him????? I need a hand to hold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why do they do that? |
| The only excuse for the rapid change in airline price that I can believe is the software is designed to reflect interest in the flight. The higher the interest (more people looking at the flight in a certain period of time), the higher the price goes until the interest level drops and the price starts going back down. I know it can be programmed that way.....
And I hate it. |
Mom of 3 wrote: The only excuse for the rapid change in airline price that I can believe is the software is designed to reflect interest in the flight. The higher the interest (more people looking at the flight in a certain period of time), the higher the price goes until the interest level drops and the price starts going back down. I know it can be programmed that way.....
And I hate it. Si by checking the price of the ticket, I'm driving the price up  That just sounds like something the airline would do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
| Check several diffrent airports. Sometimes driving 50 miles to pick up saves lots of money.
We use Montreal when going to Plattsburg. |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's a good tip too - check on both ends. I have saved several hundred dollars on many flights by driving a few extra miles. |
| Be sure to check www.Southwest.com if you're near an airport they service (Buffalo and Albany, Salt Lake City and Raleigh-Durham NC are such airports). Likewise JetBlue.com... |
I  Jetblue! But from Chicago, I can only go to NY or Long Beach, Ca. on them  I hope they will expand their destinations from O'Hare. |
| Unfortunately because of the destination there aren't alot of "options. I am pretty much stuck with flying her into Charleston or Savanah unless I want to spend a good chunk of vacation time driving to airports.
Jet Blue doesn't fly to either , I have flown her Jet Blue from SLC to Syracuse which saves alot but this time we are headed South. |
| We just did the same thing. Todd and I, and son Travis and his GF Nicole are going out to Washington state for a short vacation.
I have the best luck going online directly through the airlines. I check out the discount companies, but they never have been the cheapest price. We use Sun Country or Northwest the most. |
| Well, I did buy a ticket.
First I went to Kayak.com, found the cehpest flight then went to the airline web site and bought it directly from them. From the airline I was able to get a Sun-Sun ticket at the Tues-Tues kayak price! Still expensive but I guess the day of "cheap" airline tickets are long gone. |
| Hi,
My suggestion is Priceline.com. As long as you are not fussy about what time the flights arrive or depart you can usually do very well. You specify the day you want to fly and the price you want to pay and they come up with the flights. A good rule of thumb is to take the lowest price you have found and take about 40% off of that for your Princeline bid, i.e the lowest fare you have found is $200 rt - 40% bid $120.00 The flights most likely won't be the most convenient, but they will be cheap! Another choice is Hotwire.com. Again you give them the day, but in this case they will give you the price and if you like it and commit to it, then they will give you the flights. And again, the flights probably won't be the most convenient. At one point in my airline management career I was a pricing manager. You get gray hair very quickly in that position. Choose the wrong pricing strategy and your flight goes out empty or you leave people at the gate extemely unhappy. These days it is more often the latter. Either way other powers that be want to know how and why you made the decisions you did. A no win situation! By the way, pricing is done by computers that analyze prior flights, current booking patterns and other variables. They literally change pricing by the minute. My advise to anyone buying an airline ticket these days if you see a price you think is fair, buy it at that moment. There is a good change it may be gone in 10 minutes. On the other hand you may get lucky and find a lower price a coupel of days later! You just don't know. Even a pricing manager doen't know. Good luck! P.S. My other piece of advise for anyone flying these days is go for the 6am flight or the earliest flight in the morning. Usually the equipment has come in the night before, so you are not waiting for the flight to arrive and the crew is fresh for the day. They will not "time out" where the airline either has to replace the crew or xxl the flight. |
| I've never had much luck with priceline...... they either have no available tickets or the price isn't appreciably less. |
Tasker's Mom wrote: I've never had much luck with priceline...... they either have no available tickets or the price isn't appreciably less.
I just did great with Priceline going to Chicago. You have to name your own price and lowball for a few days. It took me a week but I finally got the price that I wanted for my hotel. I did it before for plane tickets and saved almost 75%. It takes a little more time than just logging on and buying but you can save quit a bit. |
| I will most likely head out to Utah next spring so maybe I'll give it a try for that trip. |
| Air Tran just started flying to charleston in May, ck them out. I recently got a ticket to fly from charleston to Albany. One week the ticket was $183.00, a few weeks later it was $410.00. So I used my miles, the NEXT DAY it was $183.00 again. I was so mad.........I usually search through Shermans Travel too...... |
| Hmmm, interesting. I have never heard of Air Tran.
I found their web site and they do have CHEAP tickets, only they don't fly WHERE I want For example, I can get a ticket fom NY to Charleston but NOT from Salt Lake to Charleston. They fly out of Salt Lake but not TO Charleston from Salt Lake. |
| Here you go:
http://www.airtran.com/Home.aspx I know they fly out of Buffalo and Rochester, but not sure where else in NY. |
| Very frustrating, they don't fly NY to SLC either |
| There still a pretty small airline. Usually its the smaller airports too. |
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