How far out to purchase your flight tickets?

Well, we are going to Sicily in May. I bought tickets in early December so five months out. My daughter and her husband are going too and they wanted to to wait. Well now three months out prices are higher than two months ago.

I don't know what the magic number is and this year seems different than previously. Last year I bought well in January for May to Greece.

I have seen cheaper tickets earlier but, as you suggest, some of those flights then ended up cancelled before I bought tickets. I had a lovely flight picked out that went through Zurich from Palermo with a three hour layover. That light was cancelled at some point and it was a 17 hour layover before I bit the bullet and bought tickets (and not with a 17 hour layover).

These articles are basically useless. Unless those people posting them have been accepted by Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry their crystal ball skills are probably not working.

Especially post Covid. All bets are off.

There is no best time to buy special window that everyone knows about,

I do 2 things. 1. I book when I know fairly certain I’m going and I see a fare i like. 2. I book with airlines like Delta. They will let me cancel from the credit that I can use for future trip if prices go down or I have to cancel the trip. There are airlines that don’t charge you to rebook and if you think things might change, it might be worth paying a little extra to book with one of those

I’m going to watch it this year and see what I find. Our criteria is booking with OneWorld because maintaining status as we get older has become pretty much a requirement for domestic travel. Ten years ago we’d spring for an exceptional fare on another airline, but that hasn’t happened for several years. I’ve kept track of airfare for over 10 years, so when we see a fare that falls in the reasonable category, we take it. We’ve given up on anything but business class if we’re going internationally, although I could move back if necessary. I just looked up the fare for our trip in late May and the price has jumped 2000 from what we purchased. I’m going to keep checking using the suggested timelines to see what happens.

If the forum is any place to judge (and it’s probably not) there are a lot of people planning to travel this year and many for the first time.

My experience in purchasing tickets 4 months in advance is that the flights are often cancelled or rescheduled to different times requiring an updated itinerary. I think that is to be expected now. But now, I book the flights about 2 months in advance for overseas travel.

We usually buy our tickets 2-3 months ahead. After the initial Covid break in travel and before booking we now check Flight Aware ...https://flightaware.com/and try and see which flights are consistently arriving and departing at the various airports. Sometimes it is easy to see which flights actually have a good history compared to others.

Some caveats... for example some flights are seasonal so they will not show up in the off months. Another is.. past performance is no guarantee of future results. We have done this each trip since covid, 3 in all plus our 4th upcoming in a couple of weeks. So far no changes or cancelations. United, Lufthansa, Air New Zealand. Originating airport: SFO To and from Rome, Frankfurt, Munich, LAX, Auckland NZ. Our upcoming flight is United from SFO to Valencia Spain, connecting in Munich. Returning from London LHR. Hopefully all will be OK again.

The other consideration these days, is it worth spending the extra to get refundable tickets? Or a type of insurance that does the same.

My answer is, you betcha.

I used to laugh at the idea of making plans for the weekend, let alone 6-9 months in advance. My priorities have evolved, and along with that, I've learned that it's OK to set boundaries to protect my priorities. I am now, in early February, preparing to buy tickets for September.

I set alerts for tickets I've bought, and reprice them for credit if they drop. (A revolving set of credits keeps me kinda stuck in the AA/Oneworld network, but status is the upside to that.)

Schedule changes happen—especially small, minor changes are common. But significant, disruptive changes are really rare, we just hear about them disproportionally.

I just posted this on the other thread as well. https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/11/26/flight-time-change-airline-refund/

Airlines 'pencil in' flights 11 months in advance and then do their best to lock them in 60 days in advance.

We are taking the RS tour from Munich to Vienna, then the train to Budapest in September. I just bought tickets on Delta as we wanted the Extra Comfort+ for the legroom. That is not a very large section on the Airbus 330-300 going between Seattle and Amsterdam, the extra legs are on KLM. For the first time I added making it refundable back to our credit card. I had compared the cost of adding the airfare in with the travel insurance we will get for the tour. The premium for the extra insurance and making the airfare refundable was the same. The airfare is about the same price as the RS Tour for a week!

phred, you could be right depending on the flight or the airline; here is how my usual flight to Budapest works out:.

Upgrade from Economy Light with a $200 rebooking fee, to Standard Economy with free rebooking: about $175 more.

Its KLM and they both have the same carry-on allowance, but that isn't necessarily so on every airline. The Standard does include a checked bag and that's what would drive the decision if I checked bags.

Now my life has been more blessed than many and in the last 10 years I have had to change my flight exactly once (I buy 2 or 3 months prior so my schedule is fairly solid when I book) and I think I may have to rebook my upcoming trip, so lets say twice in 10 years.

10 years x 3 tickets a year = 30 tickets and 30 tickets x $175 = $5,250.00 additional cost to get free rebooking; but I would have saved $400 on those two rebookings for a $4,850 loss; or I would about break even if I rebooked 13 of the 30 tickets (40-something percent of the tickets).

I dont even carry trip insurance any longer (except medical and evacuation) because, agan, the math does not work in my particular situation.

It’s a crap shoot. We just purchased our Paris/London tickets 2 weeks ago for April 14. Price was reasonable. About $1,080 pp. we are looking for tickets for a September trip to Croatia and will keep looking for the time being. We don’t have firm dates yet and are flexible.

The article addresses domestic flights ( presumably US and maybe Canada). There is absolutely no way that is relevant to Flights between US Nd Europe. It is a completely different market and people plan much differently. For Europe, lots of people start planning 9 to 12 months ahead, and start thinking of flights 6-9 months ahead.

The only domestic market that might compare is Alaska. People who plan trips to Alaska wisely book rental cars and flights way in advance—9 or 10 months ahead for best prices. Then they watch the prices on both just go up. People who decide in February or March who want to take a summer trip to Alaska are horrified when they see the prices of flights and rental cars. I have seen their rants and tears on TripAdvisor.

If you want to take a trip in the US, sure, go ahead and wait til 3 months ahead and probably won’t hurt. But don’t wait til 3 weeks out, especially for popular places like San Francisco ( I just got skunked on that one).

And don’t wait til 3 months out to buy your “trip of a lifetime” tix to Europe. People are already complaining about the price of a ticket to Paris being so much higher than Pre-covid. But it is very unlikely to go down. Sure you can see some “deals” on kayak, etc., but those are usually undesirable flights with extra-long layover times, or 2+ transfers on the way to Europe.

There is no one answer to this question. For me, a lot depends on what type of trip I am planning and how I expect to pay for the tickets.

Frequent Flier point tickets usually mean planning my trip as far out as I can because sometimes there are limits to the number of frequent flier seats available on my desired flights. When they are gone, there is no guarantee that more will appear. On the other hand, they can also be used for last minute flights without a big premium if flights are available.

Last minute trips call for last minute airfares. I do a few more of these now than I used to, but I am still someone who like to plan ahead. If I know that my destination has periodic sales (think Iceland Air , Seattle to London) I may hold off for awhile to see if one shows up or I may pounce to get the sale fare. I have a trip in April. I purchased the tickets at the end of June last year when there was a sale. A lot of conventional wisdom would say that was too early. I paid just under $1200 for RT on Icelandair in Saga Class. I just priced those same flights in the same class if I purchased them today. $5116

I think that the most important thing here is not to be continually stressing or beating yourself up about "when to buy." Buy when you can afford it and when the price seems in the reasonable range. The $100 you may save is pretty worthless if you have spent hours of worry over it. If you can't afford to buy airfare, then you may need to think about putting the trip off for a few months until you afford to buy it.

My n=1 anecdote, but I am tracking some flights to Paris for May, and one of them just dropped about 10 percent. I am not suggesting this is a brilliant strategy, to wait to buy for a trip in 3 months, but just to point out there is more to optimal pricing and timing than buying tickets a year in advance as others have done. These prices fluctuate on a daily basis, up and down...I have seen prices 6 months in advance move +/- 20 percent inside of a week. I have tracked flights for years like this on google flights, and have seen it every time.

On average, I buy tickets to Europe 2 to 3 months in advance. I have done it in as little as one week prior, and the farthest in advance I have done it was 5 months. I only buy when I am confident the dates work for my schedule - I don't know how others book flights a year in advance, just not in my DNA to do that.

I don’t have a set time for purchasing airfare. Last week, I purchased our airfare to Germany for opening week of Christmas markets. I usually wait but AA was having a web special on mileage. I was able to get 2 round trip tickets for 90k miles (for myself and son) and paid $750 for my husband’s ticket. This is from Chattanooga through Charlotte to Munich. I could have waited but I didn’t want to lose out on such a great deal.

In the past, I’ve purchased 3 months prior and up. Just depends on what I find reasonable at the time.

To the point of domestic vs International I really don't have the statistics to make an informed comment, so I went back to Google and found a survey bt Cheap-O Air published last September.

The sample was small, 900 million tickets and 3000 destinations and the results were continent specific.

For Europe they determined 1 month to 6.5 months prior with the best time being 79 days prior.

Too broad for my searching so I will think 31 days prior to 127 days prior (79 - 31) + 79. Or, 1 month to 4 months.

Very similar to the domestic flight window.

Of course you have to use a little common sense like not trying to buy a ticket to Munich the month before Oktoberfest.

Everybody acts like schedule changes are horrible. I have actually used schedule changes to get some much better flights. For example, I’m going to Europe and the cheapest flight was the New York but the schedule change occurred and I called Delta and said I couldn’t make that and they were like “oh we can put you on this nonstop”. f. You have to call and ask and know what your options are but if you work the game you can actually make schedule changes turn out in your favor.

Everybody acts like schedule changes are horrible. I have actually used schedule changes to get some much better flights.

What Carol said. A big-enough change in your flight is a golden ticket--know what you want, call in, and get the change that suits you best.

And, more broadly on this topic...I don't think the airlines themselves have a firm idea what ticket prices will be in the future. Their revenue management models have been trashed these last 3 years--first Covid and no flyers, and then a huge burst of traffic and staffing shortages. I assume they're using tarot cards and Ouigi boards, since predictive data is probably still a bit scattershot.

I agree with Carol too. I have, on at least two occasions after booking my flights way ahead of time, only for the airline to send a schedule change, to then call them up and worked it out in my favor. Most of the time, airlines are willing to work with you - of course, I am very sweet when I call and have my options available so the agent doesn’t have to do all the work.

Oh, I love getting a flight change email. Absolutely a golden ticket, often allowing me to change to a flight I would have liked but wouldn't have liked to pay for.

I book out about 9 to 10 months prior to travel dates with refundable ticket. Why, I really don't know; but so far the fares have been lower and only have gone up.

I just got United's change notice for my return flight. Better seats but shorter connection time. Instead of hijacking someone's thread, I posted this thread if someone will be kind enough to let me know if the timing will work.
Thanks, Kathy

I can only really speak to domestic flights. My SO lives in MA & I live in NC. For 7 years now one of us is traveling to the other once a month. We have found 90 days to be the sweet spot for these flights. Rarely is it less than that on closer dates. Occasionally me going to Boston may get cheaper in winter but it's not significant.

Since Covid buying 90 days out often means schedule changes. They are a pain when you travel this much but not much can be done about it.
Charlotte is an AA hub & we have much higher flight prices than other airports. I've been watching flights to SFO for months now in Jan - Mar time frame. At 90 days out they were about $800. Weeks out they dropped but I'm not sure if that was due to lack of demand due to the heavy rains they had in January or what.

Oddly enough, if I drive to Raleigh & stop in Charlotte those same flights originating non-stop in Charlotte are half the price they were at 90 days out. It's very frustrating to know I can drive to another city & end up on the same flight I originally wanted for half the price.