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Air Fare -Thursday is now the day to Book

Posted by (PA) on

At least for Lufthansa, Air Canada, UAL
We've been tracking fares for a month, and I thought we did well to jump on a price drop last Thursday, for Lufthansa, it did disappear the next day. This was for Philadelphia to London and Amsterdam back to Philly, next April.
Because I am a bit OCD, I have kept following this. And today, again Thursday, the fares I saw not only came back, but were even substantially lower. As in our Lufthansa tickets now $768 (from $820, which I thought was great), and had we been willing to take Amtrak from 30th Street to Newark and back, United would now get us there for $694. Air Canada is also in the mix, in the lower $700s.
For curiosity I played with this for roundtrips from here to either LHR or AMS, and it was similar for these 3 carriers.
With Thursday being the day.
I will bet these are gone by later tomorrow, and will likely reappear next Thursday, or at least later next month on Thursday.

BTW, none of this affected the high-priced direct flights via US Air or the BA/American group, which while at a somewhat lower point, as in just south of $1,100, that I saw late July, they have been fixed in price over $1200 since then.

Posted by
2787 posts

Thank you for the information. I will have to start monitoring the Thursday prices on Lufthansa since we plan on flying them to Europe next June. I recently read an article written by the fellow who runs Airfarewatchdog which tracks prices for a "gazillion" flights and his conclusion is that, in general, there is no "best day" to purchase tickets but advises monitoring your desired flight route/airline and purchasing your ticket when you see a fare that you feel is acceptable for you. He also mentioned that by spending more money you can buy a ticket that is refundable/changeable incase a lower price appears. I have also read about several web sites that, if you buy a ticket thru them, they will monitor the price for that ticket and if it drops more than the "change fee", they will repurchase the ticket for you. I wish I had saved both of those articles. But, for now, I will be watching Lufthansa fares on Thursdays. charlie

Posted by
14980 posts

On Lufthansa the flight from LAX to Budapest is going for $900 plus (incl. tax). That's very tempting and doable too even though not non-stop. It puts me close enough to Vienna and Berlin (by night train via Munich)

Posted by
8319 posts

Playing the airfare games is why we usually are looking to go the last few days of March to Europe. And thankfully, that's about when the snow melts and Spring shows up. We were proud of our $728 trip into Budapest and out of Prague this year.

Thanks for the info. Anyone's got to be ready to jump on a fare when it drops for a day, as the best prices may only be around for one or two days--or until sold out.

Posted by
2858 posts

You both have great prices. Back in 2011 our trip to Budapest, return from Krakow, was $1,140 per, which I thought was pretty good then. As my wife is a Philadelphia school teacher once we started Euro travel we have been forced to fly summer only. She retires this winter, hence the April trip (and no more summer trips, at least to Europe).

I was justifiably proud of the Lufthansa fare that I feared would disappear. And then I see this today. Had I been able to get that UAL at $694 with the train between here and Newark and then direct flights, I would have fallen all over it, even though the timings are less convenient. That price is insanely low, the savings pay for a lot of other stuff.

Posted by
1531 posts

I just checked on a multiple destination flight to California in feb, its $495 for rotten time-$553 for better time today........................when I looked at it a couple of weeks ago it was $668.....larry may have found the current loop hole!!!

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