Chiclanagir

Looking at Autumn flights back to the UK which Flybe and they are looking quite expensive for October (not half term) should we be booking now in case they go up or delay in case they come down.

mrsjdr

Normally the earlier you book the cheaper it is as when seats get booked they go up, having said that, you never know ???? I would book early myself but if prices go down??????

bob_day

In my experience short haul flights tend to be cheaper the longer the time between purchase and flying. Before we moved over here full time I often used be at work had a fancy to pop over to Spain the next weekend. I would try the usual flight sites. No 99p tickets to be found then, a couple of hundred quid at least.

Long haul on the other hand there do tend to be bargains the closer you get to flight time. Having said that we've just booked returns to Singapore for next winter. Given the amount of tax and surcharges paid in the total fare even if the ticket price halved it wouldn't make a huge difference to the total cost

Always a bit of a gamble.. I guess when you see a price you are happy with go for it and don't look again.

Lynn R

I would be cautious about booking too far ahead - Monarch have just totally messed up my travel plans for early December. I had booked a flight a couple of months ago to the UK with Easyjet and a flight back with Monarch for 3 days later - because I wanted an afternoon flight and Monarch are the only airline that fly to Malaga from Manchester in the afternoon. Lo and behold, the week before last I got an email from Monarch to say that they had altered the time of my flight to 7.45 am! My option was to cancel (but no other airline had a suitable flight) or change the date which I have had to do, to the previous day, so I am now having to fly out on a Friday and back on the Sunday, hardly worth the bother. If you wait until nearer the time to book, you are less likely to be hit by such operational changes.

I have heard it said on TV travel programmes and in travel articles that the optimum time to book is 8 or 9 weeks in advance.

Speaking of high prices, flights for Summer 2012 have recently gone on sale with some airlines and the prices are absolutely horrendous, for the Malaga - Manchester route at any rate.

guesswork

I have been looking at East Midlands to Faro for next year and they gone about 20% on the prices for this year. They seem to have hiked the prices now that the up front price has to include the Taxes

licinius

UK internal flights need booking in adavance as there are huge savings to be made but I find little to be gained from booking UK/Spain flights more than a month or so in advance.

Domino

Cheer up - holiday packages slashed

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/256682

Im_and_Er

There is absolutely a best time to buy, two times in fact...................yesterday and tomorrow

Seriously though the best strategy IMO is to look regularly and buy when the price is acceptable. Sometimes you'll win others you'll lose but on balance you'll not do too badly.

That said it's been suggested that Ryanair, and possibly Easyjet too, analyse price browsing and hike prices according to potential demand rather than actual purchases so if true too frequent browsing could be counter productive.

licinius

That is definitely the case & it's not just those 2 airlines but all of them that do it.

noelrosie

I''ll second that ... we recently had an experience with Ryanair where I had searched for flights for my daughter, told her the price, logged in again on my PC to buy them and they'd gone up. We'd heard rumours about price-hikes after browsing, and lo-and-behold, when she logged in on her own laptop, the price she paid was the first price I'd seen earlier that day

Makes it difficult to check out the competition unless you have multiple PC's and user accounts!

Domino

yes they have done that to me as well
is it because the put a cookie into the pc or retain the IP address at their end ??

currently have 2 pc's in different countries so will have different IP's so will have to investigate the cost options for getting access to a VPN that will hide the IP - will also be able to watch BBC online.

jdr

Cookies are the problem, clear your cache before you revisit the site.

adra04778

Cookies are the problem, clear your cache before you revisit the site

Could you tell me how to do that please

jdr

It`s just clearing the history of the sites you visited, THIS will explain how to do it depending on which browser you use.
You can set your browser to clear it when you close the browser everytime, it`s all explained in the link.

adra04778

Thanks very much