Whens the best time to find good airfare?

[SamIchi]

My parents are going to germany in September, they wanted me to look for tickets online. I've searched all the popular sites (Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline...), and I've also been using Yahoo which searched several sites. What site do you travelers use?

I assume the earlier you looks for tickets the better, but I've also heard that airfare is really sporadic, and change frequently and it might be good to wait til the end of summer. But I don't want to wait til the last month and find only $1000 tickets. So fill me in on the best time to get tickets. And any other suggestions.

 

[alexlovesmacs]

use kayak its searches all the sites for you

 

[comictimes]

it all depends on how much you're willing to gamble really. Sometimes an airline will drop prices shortly before a flight in order to try and sell as many tickets as possible for it. But if you wait that long you risk extremely expensive tickets or even having all the flights sold out.

 

[LeahM]

I would suggest looking at the airline that you want to travel daily. Thats how we found tickets for Newfoundland, it was either, a good seat sale soon or we wouldn't go. Then we checked the website one day and there were seats on sale for 50% off. So now we have our tickets

 

[Macky-Mac]

kayak is a good site to start.....and hopefully your parents are planning on traveling in the second half of september or they'll get stuck paying summer fares

When to buy? If you buy too early, you're going to pay a fare that will make the airlines quite happy. If you wait until too late, then you run the risk of finding that all of the less expensive fares have been sold and you'll have to pay a fare that will make the airlines extremely happy. The airlines will be closely monitoring sales and your goal is to find one of those sweet points when some airline decides to have a sale. In my experience, this is way too early for that to happen for september travel.

I agree with LeahM, check frequently and you're more likely to catch a good price.

 

[yg17]

With fuel prices jumping up, thus, causing rate increases, you're probably better off booking sooner rather than later.

Of course, if you have my luck, you'd book today and find it half the price sometime towards the end of August

 

[irmongoose]

I've always found the best deals through the airline's own website. Of course these things vary, but sooner is definitely not always better. My experience is that you can get the best deals about 2 months before the travel date.


irmongoose

 

[ntrigue]

A rule of thumb is Wednesday morning at 1-3am. I can't recall if this is EST/PST but a quick search will tell. I believe MSN has reported on this tip. Essentially, airlines recycle their fares at this time so you can find great deals before they are purchased at 7am.

3-5 months shows a reasonable savings.