Purchasing Airline Tickets NYC to London and Paris back to NYC for April 2015

This is the most frequently asked question with no answer. O' there are a bunch of repeated myth - sweet spots at six months, three months, three weeks. The point is the price of airline ticket is highly driven by computers that make almost hour determination as to the price. IF there was a best time, everyone would wait till then but the computers already know that.

So what do you do? Check prices now and see what the pattern and range of prices are. Little like buying stock, hard to get the cheapest price. If you can get close, be happy. From New York you are in the best place to get the best prices because of competition. I generally find prices are best very early - 6 -9 months out. But there is no magic.

Thank you Frank - Looks like I should start looking soon!

ssbhinc,

I spent 4 + years in college for a Prof to tell me this. "don't make things harder than they are"

I buy my tickets as soon as i can nail down my itinerary. Its been about 9+ months out so far for my bookings.

if you're going to make a habit of traveling, eventually you will get a feel for cost from your port to someplace else if you go there enough times.

one things about buying tickets too soon is that if anything happens between now and then, how much will it cost you to make changes? read the fine print.

buying your tickets is a no win situation. You WILL spend $$$ (not including air miles). Its just a matter of degree. Cry now or cry later. Would you rather gamble getting a less expensive flight? the flip side its it will cost more. Since you have time to do some homework, choose a fictitious departure date several months out and monitor the cost daily of that flight and see how it changes the closer it gets to the departure date.

as far as hotels, i book as early as i can nail down my itinerary. I like to travel in march/Sept where its more or less "off season" or close to it so finding a place to stay usually isn't that bad and the prices aren't as high during tourist season. Sometimes those months are still considered "tourist" season and i will make changes or try to book as early as possible.

good luck and happy trails.

For you itinerary, do be sure to book it as "multi-city" on one ticket, rather than as two one-way tickets (much more expensive). And unless you have a reason to prefer a particular airport, use NYC to find all New York airports, LON to find all London airports, and PAR to find all Paris airports.

I agree that you should start looking now, just to get an idea of prices. Use Kayak http://www.kayak.com/flights or Matrix ITA http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ to learn which airlines fly the routes, and then check directly with the airline's own websites as well. Sign up for fare alerts from Kayak as well as the airlines (you will probably need to sign up for NYC to Paris and NYC to London as roundtrips, since I haven't seen fare alerts available for multi-city itineraries). Start deciding now how much "pain" you will endure to get a cheap flight. Will you leave at an inconvenient time? Will you take a very indirect route? (Lately, some cheap fares from New York to Europe go through Istanbul, which adds hours to the flights). Do you insist on nonstops? (Other cheap flights change in Dublin, which is much faster than going via Istanbul, but is still not nonstop). There's no right or wrong answers, but you need to decide now, so you can buy quickly when you see a good fare.

Then, when there's a good deal, you'll be able to recognize it, and pounce; fares can disappear in an hour. Have your credit card and passport information ready, so there's no delay in booking (people have posted here that they lost a fare because they were looking at work but this info was at home; by the time they got home, the fare was gone).

Start looking now at prices for the destinations and length of time you are thinking of traveling. This will give you an idea of how much the tickets cost. Most airline sites will only post prices no more than 9 months in advance. Right now you can see what the cost is if you were to buy the tickets now. If you look at the same route in the middle of winter you probably will see a huge difference. Now that you have the high and low agree on what you want to pay and be ready to jump on any fare that comes close to that sum. Good fares disappear in a matter of minutes sometimes so search every day as far back as possible. Have fun!

Once you purchase one item, starting with Trans-Atlantic flights, then the plan will start to solidify and each next step should feel less overwhelming. Hotels may take reservations now for longer stays, but if you're only requesting 2 - 3 nights, they may be less ready to talk. If you are taking Eurostar train from London to Paris, those tickets go on sale 4 - 6 months ahead at the best prices.

Harold is right, I checked for airfares one morning at 7am and by the time I checked again (and purchased) at 8am, the fare had gone up $50. And, once you purchase, don't look back at prices; if there is a dip, you may feel like you overpaid, no matter how good the fare seemed.

Could someone remind ssbhinc about the surcharge for either landing or taking off from London. I don't remember exactly how that works. That surcharge should be avoided, so check fares flying into Paris and out of London and also into London and out of Paris. There should be a difference.

If I recall, the high fee is for flights originating out of Heathrow. If the flight out is a connecting flight, part of the ongoing flight, it is not charged.
As an extreme example, when my son flew back from his St Petersburg semester, he flew St. Petersburg to Heathrow to Philly, all BA (as he did going out). His flight from St Petersburg as scheduled would arrive too late to make the last Philly flight out that day. The first flight to Philly the next day was still considered a connecting flight and this fee was not charged, even though he would have to leave the airport and clear immigration and customs. Since he was going to have to do that anyway, and had a high school friend at LSE he could stay with, he stayed a couple extra days. And the fee was now charged, as this was now a multi-city flight. BA's site gives an excellent breakdown of all the surcharges, and we could see this appear when comparing the flights.