I've been watching airfares using Google Flights for a couple of months for our April 29-May 8 Best of Scotland tour. There's been fluctuations, of course, but I've seen pretty consistent pricing, especially on economy class. Our last two trips, we've flown economy on Aer Lingus, and they've been leading the pack most of the time I've been looking for this trip. I could have booked Chicago-to-Edinburgh round trip connecting through Dublin for under $700 apiece.
I was hoping to fly premium economy this time, however, and Aer Lingus doesn't really offer that. Instead, they charge extra for exit row and bulkhead seats, which I didn't really want. On our trip to Seattle last week, we had premium economy on American and I found the extra legroom at least a bit more comfortable on my new right knee and soon-to-be-replaced left knee. The seat itself seemed slightly more padded than average, though all the seats on the plane looked brand new. Plus free alcohol ;-)
Yesterday, I found "economy plus" on United, with a nonstop flight home from Edinburgh, for a bit over $1,000, and booked it. The outbound flight goes through Heathrow, which we're not familiar with. I assume we'll have to go through U.K. immigration at Heathrow, but the connection is almost three hours, so I feel OK with that. It's about $95 more than we paid last year for economy on Aer Lingus. But it's definitely the cheapest I'd seen for premium economy other than a flash sale one Tuesday morning that I wasn't prepared to jump on.
Yes, we could have flown a fair bit cheaper, but the little extra comfort is worth something to me these days, and the nonstop home was very appealing. One downside is that we'll now have to go through passport control and U.S. Customs in Chicago, rather than Dublin as we've done the last two trips.
In any case, now that I've found a fare I'm comfortable with, I intend to follow everyone's advice and not look back at flights again.