We are looking to go to England/Scotland for 2 weeks at the end of August/early September (need to return by the 9th). Boston to London or Glasgow/Edinborough
It looks like airline tickets are a good price for the dates we are interested in. Is it foolish to buy (refundable) tickets this far in advance? Things with airline pricing seem to be constantly changing. What are the latest thoughts on this?
Thanks for any advice!
This is always the million dollar question. If you are happy with the fares and schedules you are seeing, I would go ahead and buy. If you buying a refundable fare, you have nothing to lose.
If you find a good price for your routes and dates, I would say go for it. Flight prices are all over the place and you never know what will happen. FWIW, I booked my ticket for my trip to England in mid-March back in August of last year.
This is asked so often. You can search and see so many opinions. We buy ours on opening day which is always 330 days from your flight home. We have always gotten the best price then.
If it’s a price you’re happy with, buy the tickets. If the fare is a special one, there may only be a few at the good price. We recently bought tickets for an October trip.
CupOfTea, if you see a good price now, I would recommend booking. Although August/early September may not be the height of travel for US tourists (bc of the school year calendar), it’s probably still a higher priced season where you may not see much in terms of drops.
From a personal perspective, I made about a $1000 mistake by waiting to buy three tickets to the UK from DC last year. Started watching the prices in October 2022 for a late June 2023 trip. They were really reasonable, but naive (I’ll give myself grace and not say dumb) me thought it was too early, travel articles I read said they would be lower later, etc. and I waited till after Christmas to look again… they had jumped by a lot. Never went down again. As Julia Roberts once said in Pretty Woman, “Big mistake. Big. Huge”. Ugh.
Anyway, I learned a good lesson about international airfare tickets. If I have a trip planned out pretty far, I’m not putting off buying them if I see a good price.
One last suggestion. If you go on google flights, punch in your airports and the dates you want to go. There is a historical feature on there that you can see when the best/ lowest prices were for the last year. I learned about it recently and it is a great tool.
Book ASAP. Then it is done. Same with any obligatory trains you want to take, except you can't book those too early. With those, you have 3 months lead time only, but if you get in right away, when the tickets become available, you can save yourself a fortune. Seriously.
That said, do not be surprised if the airline changes your flight - maybe a few times. I have had a flight changed 4 times by the airline, but it got sorted. No, there was no compensation... I expect nothing but my flight out of them! Remember, to them, getting there in one piece is all they are concerned with - when, and how comfortably are secondary considerations.
Check your airlines change policy. For example, I usually buy non-refundable Delta Main Cabin tickets. However, Delta has no change fees, and Main Cabin (and above) are able to be changed at no cost, just the difference in ticket cost. Also, if I can't go, I get a credit instead of a cash refund, and I will be traveling sometime.
So what I usually do, is buy when the price looks good. If the tickets go up...win, if the tickets go down some significant amount, I rebook, again, win. With the price lower, what I get is an e-credit for the difference, which again, I will spend in a few months on another trip. Refundable tickets, for me, would just be an added cost for no benefit.
CupOfTea,
I use Google Flights to monitor possible flights and jump in if I see a deal.
For example, we are flying from JFK to Manchester in mid May.
Google Flights showed only 2 direct flights from JFK
The difference (business class) between Aer Lingus and Virgin was about $4,000 which was too much.
Last week, Google Flights alerted me that Virgin had dropped its price to almost match AL so I immediately pounced.
The next day Virgin raised the fare to back where it was.
I have no idea why there was a price dip, but glad I could take advantage of it.
BTW, I don't buy refundable tickets. I got burned last Spring when I canceled the same trip we are planning this year. I was able to utilize a good portion of the funds by our trip to Portugal in October. Whatever I lost I figure I had already saved by buying nonrefundable tickets for the trips I did not cancel. Just my opinion
Regards,
Dennis
