Air Fare Booking

[obladi1]

How early in advance do you book your airfare? The fares seem to change daily. We are going to Miami from Chicago on 12/16. What is a good price to pay?? We will be returning on 12/24 or 12/25. Thanks for the help.

[hdawson]

YIKES! Christmas. I don't think any of the low cost carriers have announced schedules or fares that far out. I would check AirTran out of Midway in May or June. Or Southwest in July or Aug.

[Keith1010]

You will pay somewhat higher fares returning on 12/24 than 12/25. I looked at the American Airline web site and a round trip direct flight is $354.00 returning 12/24 and $306.00 returning 12/25.

 

There will likely not be any discounts this time of the year, particularly going in and out of Miam and given the holidays so I don't think the prices are likely to go down much and could go up. I like to book early so if it was me I would look at prices over the next few weeks and then go ahead and book.

 

Keith

[PoohUnderstands]

If last Christmas is any judge, book as soon as possible at a price that is acceptable to you. My kids took their time and booked in July for Christmas( actually flew into FLL on 12/15 and returned on 12/25!) and had to pay over $850 pp from Denver. Now normally, flying Frontier the price is usually in the $275-300 range! So you definitely don't want to wait too long.

 

Pooh

[dyanna72]

Just last week I booked my airfare thru Delta (JFK to MIA) for my cruise this coming Nov on the Navigator (RCCL) Price was right & knew it would not get any lower than this since flying into Miami is usually higher than flying into FLL.

[Host Mike]

I'm keeping an eye out for RDU - MIA in July.

Last year (actually the past several years) I managed to get this for around $159-179.

They held pat at $262 then last week it jumped to $282.

I am going to hold out until the end of February to see if they start any summer sale. But if nothing by then, I figured I better go ahead and bite the bullet.

With fuel prices unpredictable, so goes the air fare.

[hdawson]

Mike so true. The legacy airlines absolutely must get their revenue up to at least match their costs. While oil was near $68 last week, yesterday it was down to 63 and change. No one knows what will happen with Iranian and Venesuela oil in the future. Tropical storm forcasts have been suggesting another terrible season ahead. What happens if we loose 100 Gulf rigs and the shut down of the pipelines again. Surely it's a crap-shoot. Personally, I'll gladly drive to RDU or CLT to use AirTran my line of choice.

[Host Mike]

I'll gladly drive to RDU or CLT to use AirTran my line of choice.

 

Used to be I could count on saving a few bucks with Air Tran.

Now they stay right in there with everyone else.

As soon as American bumped by twenty bucks - Air Tran was right behind them

I would think they would be a little less since American has the non-stop in this market.