I'm ready to book my trip to Jamaica, but am suffering a little bit of sticker shock at the flight prices--$630 out of BWI to Montego Bay in mid-January.
I was prepared to bite the bullet and get the tickets when I learned I could use my Delta miles on Air Jamaica, but of course, no availability is showing up for our possible trip dates.
Any thoughts? Does $630 sound right? Can someone who has successfully used Delta miles on Air Jamaica share how long in advance they booked the tickets? I wasn't sure if was worth waiting to book in case of a fare sale or a chance FF seats would open up.
Thanks! Kym

Delta allows you to book FF tickets 330 days in advance of the return date of your trip. For example, my vacation next year is May 21-28, 2005, so exactly 330 days in advance of May 28, 2005, I called Delta and got two FF seats to Grenada (using Delta from Knoxville to Atlanta and Air Jamaica from Atlanta to Grenada). The Delta representative told me those were the only two FF seats that were available at all for the Atlanta to Grenada leg of the trip. (Of course, now I'm planning on changing my plans due to Hurricane Ivan, and the damage it has done to Grenada). Anyway, it seems like Delta has fewer and fewer FF tickets available each year, so I would recommend calling 330 days in advance of your trip if at all possible.

The last time I use DL miles to fly on Air Jamaica, I booked about 6 months in advance (Nov 2003 booking for May 2004 travel). At the time I was able to get the dates and flights that I wanted (LAX-MBJ nonstop) without any problems. But in February my plans changed and I had to make some date changes. Luckily they were still able to get me there/back on the new dates that I needed but I had to take a connection rather than the nonstop. I think Air Jamaica make available only a maximum of 2 award seats per flight in each class of service and once those are gone they do not release any more. Would you be willing to make a connection in ATL (or another airport)? DL also operates flights from ATL-MBJ so that would open up more possibilities.

Yep, Delta has very few FF seats on all their flights and even less on Air Jamaica. Top that with the fact that you want to visit Jamaica during their busiest time and you're going to have slim to no chance of using FF miles. Also, because January is such a busy month for Jamaica, that price is probably about right. You might try Priceline or something like that. Good luck!

Thanks for the input everyone. Because we only have four nights for this vacation, we've decided we aren't willing to do a layover in Atlanta, so it looks like we'll be buying the tickets on Air Jamaica. I keep thinking about how I got tickets on AJ to St. Lucia for $350 in January for my honeymoon, but I have to remind myself that was five years ago, and prices change. Thanks again.

I have also been pricing AJ from BWI in January. I found 1/10 through 1/17 for $395 per person. The difference may be that I am looking at a week and can leave and return on a weekday. I saw this price on www.flycheapabroad.com

cartera--
Thanks so much--I found $395 for the week of the 10th, and $432 for the week of the 17th on flycheapabroad.com. Have you ever purchased tickets from this website before?
Kym

I think I answered this above, but just in case, post this question on www.negril.com That is where I heard about flycheapabroad and I believe someone was recommending them. You could search their message board also.

Kym,

Yes and made the horrible mistake of buying tickets from FlyCheapAbroad.com.

Beware! Warning! Caution! Achtung!

I had seen good things about them on some message boards, and they had really good fares on their website for the flight that I wanted to take from SFO to CDG.

There were special instructions to say that your baby or babies are over 2 years old if you want them to have their own seats. I have 2 month old twin girls, so I followed the instructions to specify their age as 2 years old to make sure that I got 4 seats.

After I made the reservation (just over $2100 for 4 seats) I got an email saying that there was a "system availability error." Before I had received this email, they had already reached my wife by phone, and I guess in the process of that call found out that the girls are in fact infants. They then told my wife the "good news" that even though the fare that I had booked was no longer good, that they could get us a cheaper fare. You guessed it ... they changed the booking from 4 seats to 2 seats (with babies on both of our laps all the way from San Francisco to Paris!!!

Really horrible bait and switch. I'm now going into my second week of trying to fix this. The value of the time spent will tack a real cost of about $2800 (and climbing) to whatever the cost of the tickets is.

There are whole days when you can't reach anything but a voicemail. Leaving messages is futile. I've never had a returned call. When you do talk to someone and they promise to call back, they have never called back. Right now I am 1 hour and 14 minutes into a call that went like this. 2 minutes of hold, person answers and says "hold please," 18 more minutes of hold, then I get to say "can I speak to Shirley" (I'm insisting on getting names now), then 21 more minutes of hold, then Shirley answers and I give her my booking number and repeat what has happened (for the nth time), and then she tells me that I'll have to pay much more, and at this point I don't care, I just want this pain and expense to stop, so I say "how much more?," and she says that she will calculate, and I've been on hold ever since.

Well at least I'm putting my extremely long hold time will be of some use if I can save someone else from going through this needless nightmare. I book all of my travel online, and this is first horrible experience I've had.

Good luck and happy trails!

My wife made a purchase through www.flycheapabroad.com and everything went smoothly. Granted, did not have kids. Sorry to hear about your problem.

You might take a peek at beachdestinations.com - if any of htier hotels work for you they have some great deals from time to time...and I have had no problems with them, always get a person answering the phone and prompt email replies.

KDR - I was just on AJ checking 1/25/07 and returning 1/30/07 or the first week in February - I found air for two for $729.74 from BWI to MBJ. It is even a little cheaper from BWI than PHL - usually PHL is cheaper and since I live between both I check both airports. Good Luck!