MsElui

im looking at flights to the UK next summer hoping i can get a much better price booking it now

One app - i looked up couldn't find anything June 2015 onwards and the first site i tried - American airlines seemed to go only up til May 2015.

Am i just trying 'too' early?

Mr Weeze

Yep - typically you can only book up to a year in advance.

Pulaski

And best prices only in the last 90 days. We got killer prices (67% of the "going rate" for that route with changes on the several of the leading travel websites, or 61% of the going rate for direct flights), but only less than 90 days before we fly. ..... And these aren't change-four-times flights via Iceland or Istanbul, or with Flying Crate airlines - they are direct CLT-LHR flights with US Airways.

Yorkieabroad

Don't leave it too late though......I tried the bereavement route last week, and after being told by one airline (3 times) that I should plan ahead ( f$&@ off Delta. forever) I booked KLM ( yes, I know, I know.....forever lasted about 30 minutes, but it was a KLM flight, dammit!) at $2700 Houston to Teesside 36 hours in advance. Just for giggles, I checked the price again about 12 hours out, and it was up to $11000 (eleven thousand) for an economy seat!

More realistically though, we monitored from about 6-8 months out for IAH-MME last Christmas, and it hardly moved until the last 6 weeks when it started rising. We bought at about 3 months out.

Pulaski

That was exactly our experience, except that I found two "flash sales" which only appear to have lasted one day or "until sold" (see my post above). There may have been more in the following weeks, but naturally I stopped checking after I bought our tickets, which I did about 9-10 weeks ahead.

lansbury

The airlines load the flights into the reservation systems 330 days in advance. If you want a return flight you will not see them in the system until 330 days before that date. The only reason to be checking for reservations that early is if you want the best award ticket availability.

Vimto

Darn is Middleton St George still open? I thought it was only open for a few charter flights, I know its a little further up the road but Newcastle was always my choice after having 3 late night Schipol-Teeside flights cancelled on me (probably I was the only one booked)

Yorkieabroad

Still open, but only just....they lost all the charter business a few years back, which was a shame, because the family used to use it a lot for getting down to Spain, and the flights were generally full. I think I read somewhere that they're down to about 3 KLM Amsterdam flights a day, and a few Aberdeen hops, and that's about it, so the end can't be far. It's a shame when you think back to how busy it used to be with charter flights a few years back, but they don't seem to be able to get that business back for some reason, and little tweaks like increasing free parking time from 30 mins to 3 hours is hardly likely to solve the problems......

It's our first choice, because it's only 20 mins away from where we stay over here. Newcastle comes a close second (a little under an hour away) and Leeds Bradford third, a little over an hour away.

technolog

Martyn Lewis's site, MoneySavingExpert.co.uk reckon that on average, flight prices are cheapest 59 days before the flight.

Pulaski

In my very limited recent experience, I would agree with that.

tonrob

The problem is, I'm wondering exactly how helpful that is. If you were booking lots of flights all of the time then taking and using a statistic like this could save you money. If you're just booking a single flight, however, then maybe not so much.

For the average to be 59 days then half of the flights must have already been cheapest sooner than that and are now on their way up price-wise. As seat prices are demand-based, then as the plane fills up then prices can rise rapidly. Waiting until 59 days therefore has quite an element of risk built in. Flight occupancy seems to have risen over the last few years (haven't verified that, just an observation as a regular flyer) and so I'd expect flights on average to get more expensive sooner over time.

Of course all of this depends on route, time of year, day of week etc. but, in general, if I had specific plans for a specific number of seats and within a particular timeframe then I'd be looking to lock in the booking much sooner.

Mr Weeze

There seems to be a some recently written stuff on t'internet (which is therefore rock solid) that the majority of Americans book flights about a week out. People have done exercises where they will check the price of a flight from when it is first released and the price (and competitors prices) are all pretty much static until around 1 month out. I am assuming this is domestic routes. Then at the arbitrary 21, 14 and 7 day out timeframe the prices start moving dramatically.

The conclusion from this was that you're not really losing much by booking earlier than you would think. Obviously if a route is more busy than average the price will start to shift more dramatically earlier.

I also agree with you about flight occupancy too. Every flight I get on now seems to be pretty much full. It's no secret the number of routes and flights has been consolidated by the airlines, so I guess it's to be expected.

Pulaski

Knowing the standard deviation would help. I would guess about 15 days, so 2SD would be +/- 30 days, or within the range 89-29 days ahead of flying, meaning a negligible number of flights sell their cheapest tickets more than 90 days out, or in the last 30 days.

newadventure

I have been following flights from Charleston, SC to LHR for the last few weeks for a return flight back to UK mid-August. Lowest 1 stop prices gradually crept up to $1700. I knew it would be expensive so i took the plunge and bought last Friday. Checked again yesterday, and they are $500 cheaper! too late to change anything of course. I was expecting a bit of variation, but that is huge

Pulaski

Bingo! Thank you, that is exactly what I was describing in my posts above, I found two $400-$500 price drops, and grabbed the second one as soon as I found it.