When do you book your air?

If you are agreed on the when/where of the trip, I see no reason why you cannot buy your tickets when you want and let them buy theirs when they want. That eliminates the "I told you so" situation.

The International Civil Aviation Organization has projected that global air passenger demand will return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of March, and exceed 2019 figures by 3% by the end of the year.

I see no reason to expect a drop in prices

Fat chance it will go down. More likely it will go up another $50 next week and the week after. This is the first full year without covid restrictions and there is pent up demand. Buy now or regret at your leisure.

Personally I prefer to fly Delta- status, free upgrades ect and book as soon as they open up tickets as I find for them that is the cheapest. However I have recently noticed the price drop for France. I was wondering if the strikes /protesting may be causing it (people thinking twice about going and choosing to go elsewhere). That seems like a good price open jaw to me especially if Delta.
Edit- also I agree no reason not to book your airfare now. I am going with 3 other Women to Italy and 2 of us booked super early and the other 2 waited and they ended up spending $200 more.

There is no magic bullet... Sometimes it's 6 months ahead, sometimes 2-3 months, and I am not seeing much of a pattern these days. I never have enough visibility on my schedule to book more than 6 months ahead anyway. If my dates are firm, buying brings peace of mind, and that piece of mind is worth the $100 that I might have saved if I had waited for the day the fare went down.

By the way, variations of $50 are very common. Track the price on Google flights for 2-3 days, maybe it will go back to the original price, but if it does not, just book.

This insistence on waiting until May or June is a "red flag" that perhaps you and your travel companions may not be on the same page as far as your trip goes. You may want to consider how decisions are going to made for the group. I see no reason why you can't make your reservations whenever you want and that they can make theirs in May/June. Do you have to be next to each other on a plane? Do you even have to be on the same plane? How much togetherness is required to travel together?

I make my reservations fairly far in advance. I look for sales or just buy when the price seems reasonable. I would never wait until May or June for September.

Are you flying from O’Hare or elsewhere? Smaller airports will be cheaper farther out.

Noting that with the current cancellation chaos this year if you book more than 6 months in advance you are looking at a greater than 50% chance of cancellation, and you may not like the substitute flights. Normally I book more than 6 months out but regretting having done that in 2023, all 4 trips quite a mess of cancellations.

I bought a ticket to go to the US for Thanksgiving, 7 months from now. It's up 300 from when I bought it two weeks ago.

We are flying Delta all the way. Our travel friends just got socked with expenses this month, so that’s why they are wanting to wait a couple months before booking. I really don’t think it’s because they think it will go down.

It does just seem more fun to go together, but we really would like to just get them. I think I will. Thank all!

This is brought up very often. We go to Europe 1-2 times a year and always have the best prices booking on our opening day which is 330 days from our return trip home.

We booked for December in February on our opening day and got MultiCity tickets in Premium Select for $1214, coach was $870. Now, those same tickets are $2800 for Premium Select and $1780 for coach. We are going over again April 2024 and I have it marked on my calendar when we are at 330 days. You can always have Delta LINK your tickets and if they make changes, they will keep you together - that's what we do when we travel with friends.

Buy the tickets the day after the credit card statement closes, then they don't actually have to pay until 7 weeks later.

I believe Tom’s assessment of a 50% chance of cancellation for a flight booked now for September is way too high.

Most international airlines have already trimmed their summer schedules as needed—-that would account for the cancellations he experienced. I had one cancellation for September from British Airways as well (and it worked to my benefit). But there shouldn’t be many more coming, especially not for the long haul (overseas) flights. If you can avoid a short domestic flight to get to the big airport for the overseas flight that will help.

I agree with the others that you need not be swayed by your friends’ choices; you should go ahead and book your flights now if you want. $1300 for open-jaw flights to France and back sounds pretty darn good, compared to other quotes I have seen ($1600:and up in Economy). I believe it unlikely that prices will go back down. Whatever trends prevailed in the past are irrelevant—things are very different now.

I generally buy 2 to 3 months in advance. I really don’t have a choice because I fly frequently. My february trip to Hungary was about $700 round trip and I bought those barely 6 weeks prior.

I watch the prices pretty routinely and I do as well, often better, than if I had bought them sooner.

My next trip is in June. I looked at tickets about 2 months ago and was stunned at the prices. I checked again a few nights ago and see that costs have come down about 10% for my destination. So I will wait a few more weeks and just keep watching.

Two other opinions on when to purchase.

1 to 7 months prior
https://thepointsguy.com/news/best-times-international-flight/

79 days prior
https://www.tripsavvy.com/when-to-buy-an-international-flight-4063912

Scott's Cheap Flights' advice, close to my experience. I have never seen anything but astronomical prices 1 month out:

"It's not too far before the flight but also not too last-minute. We call it the Goldilocks Window.

For peak travel times like summer, that's 3-7 months in advance of domestic flights, and typically 4-8 months in advance of international flights."

I buy as soon as I see a price I'm comfortable with, but usually a minimum of 5-6 months out. Having said that, pre-pandemic I was seeing a pattern of seat sales in January and September/October for Europe. I haven't seen that in the past year, but it has trained me to pay special attention those times of year.

We usually buy soon after we decide on the trip. Sometimes that is a few weeks out and other times close to a year.

I booked this morning. We had a few ecredits left so our air was $1,100 pp. it took 2.5 hours thru chat because you can’t book someone else’s ecredits online.

Note to all. I was doing this on my PC and at the 2 hour mark I either hit a wrong key or something and was out of the webpage. I almost started crying. I logged back into Delta.com to start again hoping some agent could find the chat AND my chat was still there so I could carry on.

AND my chat was still there so I could carry on.

Yes, happened to me yesterday, lost internet but when I logged back in the whole chat was there and still connected to an agent.

@Lulu. I think that is a reasonable price for this summer/fall.

It will be interesting to see who ends up paying less for their tickets. I'll bet it's Team Lulu348!

@tom, wasn’t that a relief! I’m so glad they do that.

I feel pretty good about the price with our e refits, but when we went to Italy last year the air kept going down and we got it for under $900 pp, that’s why we ended up with ecredits.

I wish we had a “like” button to push on other’s posts so they know we have read and are acknowledging them.

Just booked round trip to Lisbon from Seattle, (via PHL) first week in October, for $1000 each on American, so that's a little over seven months out. I had seen nothing lower than $1200 pp at any other point, so I booked. Hope I made a good decision, not waiting until summer.

As soon as we have agreed that we are going somewhere, we start looking at airfares. Once we have a general idea of which airlines fly where and most importantly, which connecting city we want, we'll monitor prices for a while to see how they're trending. If we see what our experience tells us is a good price, we'll book. Generally, this means booking in November/December for a trip the following year. Once we're booked, we never look back.

But we recognize that the further out you book airfare, the greater chance the flights will change before the trip.

But we recognize that the further out you book airfare, the greater
chance the flights will change before the trip.

Even more now than ever before. Both trips last year booked 8+ months in advance and on both trips, the flights heading out were significantly changed that we had to rearrange our trips by leaving a day early or coming home a couple of days later. This also meant adjusting hotel and car reservations. So far so good this year, our flight to Rome in April has been changed by about an hour and our flight to Washington DC in September has already been changed twice, by about 1.5 hours. We're lucky that we have so many direct flight options to a lot of places and we try not to choose flights with connections.

Have you ever heard about "dynamic pricing" with airfare?

We just bought open jaw British Airways-Iberia tickets from YVR-OPO, FAO-YVR.

We found the tickets on skyscanner which directed us to book on Expedia which quoted about CAD$1350 (basic, non-refundable and no checked bag) and CAD$1450 (no fee changeable with no fee and one free checked bag). There are several couples in our group and we needed to book simultaneously to make sure we are all on the same flight.

We tracked the prices for several weeks and we finally got together on a Saturday to book. When we all logged on to Expedia, it initially gave the same prices as before. But when we went to pay, Expedia gave us a message that the price had jumped $100 pp. I was so put off by this because the price had been stable for weeks.

One of the others said we may have been subjected to dynamic pricing. Booking on the weekends may have resulted in higher prices because lots of other people are also shopping for airfare on weekends. Also all the price checking that we did from the same location may have also resulted in higher prices, although I have always thought that was debunked. Anyways, we did decided to clear our cookies (it can't hurt) and wait until Monday.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, I telephoned British Airways. The particular combination of flights that we were looking at was never available on their website. I could never understand how Expedia could offer it when BA did not.

I spoke with a BA representative who explained to me that that particular combination of flights would have to be done manually on their BA booking system, which he did to give me a quote. BA's quote was even more expensive then Expedia.

I asked him why the price cost more than Expedia. He told me that it all has to do with dynamic pricing and that the price changes with supply and demand. So I decided to wait.

On Monday, when we went back to Expedia, the price increase was only $50. We decided to book anyways at $1400 because we had to start booking our accommodations.

A week later, when I checked on Expedia again, the same airfare was still available and the price had dropped back to about CAD$1350.

We waited until Monday and checked Expedia again. Once again, when we logged in it gave us the same price.

PS. FWIW, we booked 6 months out. It was only after we booked that it occurred to us that we are flying out on 9/11. Perhaps that would explain why that particular date was a bit cheaper than the days before or after.

Our friends decided to book last night, 2 days later than when i did. Tickets were already up $75 pp.