I think it's difficult to generalize about this. My experience is that it depends on where you're flying from and where you're flying to as well as the dates and the airline. Earlier this year I was looking for flights from Seattle to London on British Airways. Fares for the first two weeks of September and the last few days of August were significantly lower than the last two weeks of September. Then fares went down again in October.

BA has a 'Find our cheapest fares' tool on ba.com which goes almost to the end of Sept 2013 at this time. If you check back in a few weeks, it would give you fares into October 2013. http://www.britishairways.com/travel/cheap-flights/public/en_us?source=MNVFAH2cheapest_fares&link=main_nav

You could check other airlines for something similar on their websites.

The only thing having to do with magic in the world of airfares is the fact that the employees of airline revenue management departments (where airfares and tariffs are set) are all graduates of Hogwarts.

Airfares are set according to a witch's brew (okay, wizard's brew) of computer-driven algorithms that factor things like fuel cost (including oil futures) and labor costs, the makeup of the competition, historic demand and economic trends, and who knows how many other data elements. They change all the time, sometimes even hourly.

There used to be distinct "peak" and "shoulder" seasons, and "off-peak" for everything else. This really isn't so much the case any more; the airlines can and do adjust prices much more rapidly. In genral, the lowest prices for economy seats tend to be early in the year, after the winter holidays but before demand picks up in the spring, but this is not universal - far from it. Flights to winter recreation destinations obviously will be in greater demand than at other times, but saying that October 1, or February 1, will have lower prices compared to September 30 or January 31 is just not the case.

Monitor the route you want, sign up for fare alerts at the likes of Yapta - http://www.yapta.com/ - and be prepared to purchase when it feels right.

Trying to time the market is a fool's game. Any stock broker will tell you that, and it applies to airfares too.

There's no magic date. The prices drop when airlines are no longer filling enough seats at exorbitant summer fares. But that's likely not going to be until late October rather than early October. But just so you know, it's not at all too late to book this year. If you booked a ticket leaving in early November for France, you might get a decent deal. It would certainly not be $1600 per person.

But if you want to catch fare sales, of course it's far too early. Who even knows what fuel prices will be next year at this time?

My advice: Book the house for the dates you prefer and then just plan your travel around that. You can probably save by flying mid-week, so just go a couple of days early and return a couple of days after the rental ends if it's a Saturday-to-Saturday rental. Anyway, can't you cancel the booking a few months in advance and get your deposit back? Most villas have that kind of arrangement.

If there was a magic date that everyone knew about, nobody would buy tickets until then!! Not good business practice.

I did not mean a magic date for buying the tickets, and I know it's way too early to catch sales for a year from now! Perhaps I should have been more specific: I was wanting others' opinions as to when "peak" season ends in early fall, and it seems the answer is "it varies". I often go to France in April and May, and my experience has been that that is still "shoulder" as the prices jump drastically beginning in June. I also go sometimes in mid-Oct. but have a reason to want to go late Sept/early Oct., 2013, and some in my party want to do this as inexpensively as possible, hence the question. I am aware of the vagaries as to when to buy tickets.

Buying airfare is always a gamble; if you buy now, you take the chance that fares will drop. Wait, and you take a chance they will skyrocket and stay there.

If you know when and where you want to go, sign up for email alerts from kayak.com and airfarewatchdog.

There isn't any magic date where airlines all lower fares. I don't think you'll find any big difference between 3rd-4th week in September and second week in October.

As a matter of fact, I was researching fares this year for that exact time period. I put off a summer trip because air fares were just so expensive. I was looking at flights RT to Paris from Washington DC and also open jaw including Madrid or RT Madrid, as variations.

IN any case, what I found for this year was that yes, fares were around $200-300 cheaper for the RT in September-October than July. However, they did not vary between the beginning of Sept to the middle of October.

I remember many years ago, I think fares often dropped after Labor Day to Europe but they don't seem to any more.

Thanks, Christina; that's the info I was looking for.