michele_d

Hi Everyone,
Thanks in advance for your help with this question. Although we spent three months in Europe last year and booked everything ourselves, I have no experience whatsoever with booking of flights, with regard to price, as we used Delta sky miles for our flights. We booked those 331 days out.

So here is my question/problem. My husband and myself are planning on returning to Europe for 6 weeks in May-June 2012. We will book open jaw for our portion using Delta miles again. My son and his girlfriend will be paying for their flights and flying over to spend 10 days to two weeks with us. They will fly from LAX to Venice and home Zurich to LAX.

I told them I would research a bit and help them find the best price. Since I have never had to search for flights according to prices I am unsure when the best time to book these flights would be. I looked the flights up on Kayak and they are running $1369 on Swiss for May 20-29, 2011, even though we aren't going until 2012. In your opinion is this a good price, high, low? Do you think the price will drop any lower? How far in advance is a good time to book. Any days cheaper to fly than others? Anything else I should know? I know this is a basic question but I am clueless as to how to help them get the best price.

Thanks again, Michele

Gardyloo

It's simply too early to know. If you want to use those prices as guidelines, fine, but I'd recommend that you check on prices for May 2011 departures every couple of weeks, so you get a sense of how prices will vary according to the time from booking to the time of flying. Those prices are not especially unusual for west coast < > continental Europe. When you check, look at a couple of days in a given week - I don't think you'll see much variation - just to be sure you're not missing something obvious.

But a year can produce a lot of changes - fuel surcharges can come and go, competition following big mergers (e.g. Continental + United) - many variables. And not all airlines are created equal - a bargain seat on one airline might be much less comfortable than one costing only a few dollars more on another.

michele_d

Thanks Gardyloo. I know it's early but since I've never booked tickets this way I'm just trying to figure out how best to go about it. I guess there could be a lot of variables. Guess I will just keep checking weekly to get a better idea.
Thanks again.

qwovadis

www.farecompare.com

has some excellent tips on this.

Tues PM in late Jan is said to be good

when everyone matches/beat the fares of others...

Good luck and happy hunting,

yestravel

I would do fare alerts on a couple sites -- I like Kayak and fare compare. U can get the alerts everyday or every week. However, as others have said this year's fares may not be the best gauge of next year's fares. We went to Europe last year for about $600 each (from IAD to Spain). This year I have been tracking fares and they are at least double that. We caught a fare sale for a new route on UA last year. So u just never know. I know traditional wisdom is booking closer in (4 months or so) but I have found much better fares further out and generally I book further out. Kayak shows a chart with what the fares have been over a period of time and that is good to take a look at also. I think once u have an idea of what the fares go for, u can pounce if a good one suddenly pops up. Good luck!

michele_d

Thank you qwovadis and yestravel. Any and all help I can get is appreciated. I feel so ignorant and lost in this area so any tips at all will help. Thank you.

suze

Part of the problem is there is no way to know for sure. Like the stock market, if you could accurately predict airfares with accuracy, we'd be rich ;-)