My parents are planning to fly to Montreal in late August from LAX, and fare searches right now are showing up as $546 plus tax on farecompare.com. This seems a bit high, but my mother is anxious to have the tickets. Should I buy them now or wait for the prices to drop?

It's always a good policy to relieve your mother of anxiety. What are the travel dates and are they flexible? Are you looking only at nonstops? How much tax?

Their travel dates are August 16th-August 26th, not very flexible. This flight is on Delta and includes a connection at JFK both ways. There is almost $70 in tax for each passenger. It does concern me though, since other flight times that were available on Monday are no longer available today. Should I bite the bullet?

Will they be using a car in Montreal anyways? If so, they can fly from Longbeach to Burlington, VT for $433 on Jetblue via JFK. It's about a 2 hour drive, and pretty easy.

And, no, I don't expect the prices to drop significantly. There are fewer competition in the Canadian market than before, with low costs shutting down and US airlines adding flights very slowly.

I just got back from New England last week where I drove from Providence to Montreal- beautiful drive; Lake Champlain is spectacular in the winter (no easy task following that storm though!). However, we considered flying into Burlington, but since they will be visiting family and will not need a car, we decided that it was worth the extra bucks to fly into Montreal. I did remember to book it on delta.com to avoid the $5 processing fee. Thanks everyone!

What about cross-border car rental, though? I seem to remember there can be some issues with that, but perhaps that has changed.

WillTravel - I believe the only problem with cross-border rental is for Canadians to take a car rented in the US into Canada. But do check with the rental company if one's planning to take the car across the border either way, regardless of nationality.

Two weeks ago, I rented a car from Thrifty and drove it into Canada. I checked first, and the only issue was that if the car should break down in Canada and I would be issued a replacement Canadian car. Problem is, I would return this Canadian car to the U.S. with the metric system dials. But yes, check with the company.