best time to purchase tickets for Feb. or March travel

There are quite a few "best time" claims out there, very few of which have a great deal of data to support them. It is far more important to become knowledgable about typical fare patterns for the routes that you are interested in than to mysteriously time it perfectly.

The best time to purchase airfare is when the price seems to be on the lower end of the typical range and you can live with the price. Buy it, and don't look back. It is close enough to your desired dates that I hope you have already been tracking prices for awhile. You should also take into account fees for baggage, seat selection, or even food on some airlines and consider these part of the total cost of the ticket.

Finally, buy directly from the airline and avoid 3rd party resellers.

Have a great trip

Where are you going specifically? Do you want direct flights from the USA to Europe? The answer to these questions make a difference

"I heard Tuesday afternoon is the best time to buy airline tickets."

One hears all kinds of things, but that doesn't make them true. Carol's advice is spot-on. The best time to buy tickets is when they are cheapest, and you only can know that in hindsight. The airlines use computers to adjust the prices constantly based on demand and supply, so even they don't know when they are going up and down.

All you can do is keep looking for the flights you want, and buy them when the price seems good. Then, don't look back.

Keep looking on this forum -- use "all topics" -- people often post when they see an airfare sale (but you have to jump on the fares since sales often go away as quickly as they appear.) I booked sale tickets to Paris for late April - May 2018 at the end of October.

Over the Holidays, airline pricing analysts are not at work. You can often see pricing more halfway thru January after future supply and demand is analyzed.
It is just as important to research airports within close proximity to decide where to fly out of and where to fly into. Every airport is priced differently. For us, Atlanta is far from being the cheapest place to fly out of. I keep watch on area airport flights and airlines in Wikipedia.
And if Norwegian Air Shuttle or one of the budget air carriers is flying out of your area, good for you.

Use skyscanner to track when airlines lower fares. I don't know where you are traveling but you may find winter holiday special sales that you can be used up to March 31.

I like to check kayak.com for flight deals before I book with the airline.

I usually purchase my airline tickets 6 months in advance. I would not wait much longer, since your travel plans are coming up in 2-3 months.

"It Matters What Day of the Week You Book Airfares: A New Study"
https://www.frommers.com/blogs/arthur-frommer-online/blog_posts/it-matters-what-day-of-the-week-you-book-airfares-a-new-study

Once I settle my dates--usually in October for the next spring--if I find tickets on a carrier I like at a good price and preferred travel times, I buy them. My open jaw into Budapest and home from Munich for mid-May cost just under $1,000 and I am okay with that.

If you are traveling in 4 to 6 weeks you may have already waited far too long. Find a fare you can live with and go for it - and don't look back.

Then again it has been a week and we have never heard back from barbaraholder16 so maybe she has done something completely different.

Thank you all for your wisdom. Well, I actually booked the tickets on Christmas Eve, for about 6 weeks from then, and it was a pretty good deal. When I have had more time to plan, I have gotten alerts which have been very helpful. I have even used Scott's Cheap Flights or Airfare Watchdog to get alerts.