Checking airfare frequently paid off for us!!

Excellent job. That's my technique as well, though I don't buy that far ahead.

We NEVER book this early, but since we are traveling with a total of 6 people and we want the Comfort Plus seats, there are only 8 rows of them and we need 3 of those rows, so we didn't want to wait. Plus, the number of transatlantic flights are down compared to pre-covid and we wanted a certain itinerary where we land in Vienna by noon - options are definitely slimmer now. Hoping they'll add more, but glad we are set.

Booked at a price you're comfortable with, and don't look back. Those are both pretty easy airports to navigate, you got the seats you wanted, insurance, vaccinations...all looks good. Hope you have a great trip, I'm sure you've more than earned it. The Gluhwein will be extra special, I'm sure.

Congratulations! Every trip booked is a win. We are getting pretty confident we will be going on our trip in September and I have been looking at airfare. Not ready to actually book as we haven’t been vaccinated yet. That will be the jumping off point.
P.S. I was looking at Christmas river cruises and many are already sold out.

Last year I wanted to book to Frankfurt on American. I thought had enough miles to book one way first/business class, based on what I used last time I was able to do it. Checking days in advance, it looked good, but on the first day to actually book, it required 60% more miles! I kept looking and the amount varied often. One day I saw that I could do it with the miles in my account.

like a dummy, I didn‘t pull the trigger then, planning to do it later that day. Of course, it had gone up again! Luckily I was able to find the good rate a couple of days later.

Of course, if I can‘t use the fare this summer, I wonder if I will find the good fare in the future!

Right time, right place, good spotting!

I love a bargain and you never know where you'll find one. About 4 years ago we were going to Italy; we go about every 2 years. AA has one direct flight from Chicago ORD to Rome FCO that we always take. I had been checking out their fares for business every week or so but the fares were so much higher than the previous trip that I kept waiting to see if they would go down. 4 months before our date I decided I had to pull the trigger no matter the cost. I noticed that in addition to business class, there was a first class section on the plane. I wondered if business is so expensive what does first class go for? To my surprise, there were two tickets in First that were $200 more than economy and thousands $ less than other listed First class tickets. It turns out that someone had booked with British Airways these two First class tickets on the AA flight. They cancelled the reservation, BA sold the tickets to a ticket broker (in this case it was Vayama) and the ticket broker was selling them. I called AA to make sure these were legit tickets and the next morning checked the AA website to verify that there were 2 fewer seats available than the day before. Our one and probably only flight in First class. The rich are different from you and me! I still have the pajamas they gave us for the overnight flight and take them when we travel.

Great job getting your air booked so affordably, congrats! We love flying on Delta. I follow a similar practice. Before the opening day to book, I'll start to check rates by doing a mock booking, same flights, same weekday for departure and return that we're intending to select, but prior to our dates of travel. When you start to get a feel for prices even before you can book, you'll know a good deal when you see one! We too have booked flights at rates that seemed too good to be true and that were gone almost immediately afterwards.

I'm curious as to what insurance you bought that will reimburse pre-paid non-refundable expenses in the event of a covid-related cancellation. When we realized in March of 2020 that we weren't going to be able to travel to Italy in April, my first thought was, at least we've got trip insurance, and then to my surprise, there was no coverage. Every policy lists covered reasons to cancel, and if the specific reason a traveler is canceling isn't mentioned, there's no coverage. So it didn't matter that there was a global pandemic, and the country to which we were traveling had locked down its citizenry and closed its borders to tourism, or that our flights were cancelled, or that our hotels were closed. We did come out okay because the airline provided a full refund and the hotels where we'd paid non-refundable deposits either refunded them despite the terms or issued vouchers good for two years. From now on, I'm buying "cancel for any reason" coverage that will provide a refund of 75% of pre-paid and non-refundable costs if we cancel for a non-covered reason. Is that what you did?

Congratulations china! Sounds like a super fun trip!!

The poster above who used the ticket broker got incredibly lucky that she managed to take her trip. If you want to know how that normally works go to TripAdvisor, log on the air travel form and start reading. No matter savings it’s not worth the risk imho. Because if anything goes wrong you will discover what you just did. The airline will tell you you have to deal with ticket broker and the ticket broker will tell you we don’t do customer service or if they do give you a refund say for example airline cancels they’ll be a huge service charge you agreed to.

For insurance, go to insuremytrip.com they will ask you at some point if you want insurance that covers Covid and if you say yes then they give you policies that will cover cancellations changes etc. related to that

No comments on your airfare, but just wanted to say that Tauck is an outstanding company and will definitely take care of you if you end up canceling or whatever. They have amazing standards in customer service.

Yes, we've traveled with Tauck many times. They are, by far, the best River Cruise. We've done them all (Viking, AMA, Uniworld, etc) and Tauck blows them all out of the water.

There are deals to be had. I booked on Swiss Air today. $350 Chicago to Zurich. $401 Zurich to Chicago. Extra if you want to check a bag and select your seat. No penalty if we end up changing the flights, which we probably will. But for that price, we figured it made sense to book since we won’t lose any money and will end up saving a good amount if we do get to go.