I know questions like this have been asked ad nauseum, but I've been watching Detroit to Amsterdam for over a month, hoping for a drop, and they went UP! Do I bide my time, or should I just suck it up and buy now?
And I have to add, thank you all so much for answering my questions! I truly appreciate reading all of them!
Sylvia and Dan
If your airport has many airlines that compete on that route, then you should hold tight and wait (it's only October, and tracking fares over one month is not that long, even though it seems like it). It really depends when airlines can capably predict what the pricing should be in May 2016 without overly hedging their bets.....seven months in advance may be too far out for them to reliably price the fare, that's why sometimes you see some outrageous fares far in advance (airlines usually try to match what their competitors do on a certain route, so their software takes other airline pricing into account).
The short answer is, the best time to buy is when you're least emotional about it and you set a target in your mind (based on the info you got by tracking over many months) - once the fare meets that target, then go for it. Everyone has a different target, so that's why there's no single answer that works for all.
Check out http://www.itasoftware.com/ and look a month out to see how fares vary over time
I'm still trying to figure out what BOE stands for
Heeheehee... Best of Europe tour.
Another point of view. If you are price sensitive above personal comfort, wait. If you value having a little more room and a seat near the front of the plane, sometimes a few hundred is a small price to pay for being able to move your legs on a long flight and hit the door in front of the rush. My husband loves to travel but doesn't like flying, and he's 6'3", so we'll probably pay too much to get bulkhead seats. In the grand scheme of what a 21 day trip to Europe is going to cost ... peanuts.
You suffer or benefit from living in Detroit. Delta and partners KLM and Air France have a complete lock on flights to/from Detroit, Amsterdam, and Paris. That means they decide on the price and that is what you will pay, period. You have all non-stop flights, which is nice. And lots of times to choose from, 4 flights a day to Amsterdam, and 2 flights a day from Paris to Detroit.
Here is an idea. Fly from Windsor, Ontario on Air Canada, connecting through Toronto. $939 CAD or about $700 US. That is almost half of what Delta wants.
That sounds awesome. Just gotta figure out where to park for a month...!
$42.50 CAD/week. http://www.yqg.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Parking-Lot-Rates.pdf
