P.S. total saved over buying last July is about $50/ticket

Just goes to show you Jump when you feel right..Don't wait for the big drop it may never come. have a good trip!!!

TexasAggie - We were in the same predicament. Dates were set and could not be changed. Airfare hovered around $1355 for a couple of months in the Fall but I had never paid that much and couldn't do it. Then they shot up to $1600 and I thought what did I do, I just screwed up big time. Did my random weekly check a couple of weeks ago and prices were down to $1297 so I jumped on it. Was afraid to wait any longer. Unfortunately this is 2 stops each way but the layovers aren't too bad so I am OK with it all.

Moral,

If you are not flexible about dates.
If you have a group.
If you are bringing children.

Being able to get tickets is more important than $100/ticket.

In the past 5 years we have found transatlantic flights to dip around 4 months prior to departure but this is UK / US return. We have never paid more than $1200 any time of the year.

It is a simple game just like the casino. Find a decent price comparison site, we always use Skyscanners. Check in every week, look at the movement and at some stage dive in a buy them. Do not look at the prices once you hav bought just be happy with your decision.

I will never forget buying tickets from the UK to Nassau return. We were very happy to have got £550 return for a popular time of year. The family next to us had paid £850 each. Never forget the chap behind chipping in with the fact that he had paid £186 for one ticket.

Last spring I paid $1270 airfare from Seattle to Frankfurt, plus $157 from Spokane to Seattle, for a total of $1427. The only thing that happened to fares during the period when I first started checking them to the time when I purchased was that they went up slightly.

Well said, ira, and more more succinctly.

The $50/ticket savings is nice but I'm not certain I'd gamble again since the temporary price drop only lasted about a day at most (which we easily could have missed, and then would have been paying a heck of a lot more per ticket than if we'd purchased last summer)

US Airways did not HAVE "First Class" seating on flights to Europe..it was all Envoy and coach. The lie flats probably took some seats away from coach.

I just have to say that I get so happy when I see you posting, TexasAggie! I remember you fondly from my earliest days here!

Hi socialworker! How are you? Great, I hope! All is well here . Older son (3 yrs) is making great, amazing progress in therapy and the baby is almost 1 and doing fantastic. We took last year off from traveling and are thrilled to be back at it this year. I hope a fun trip is in store for you as well in 2014! Thanks for the "hello!"

<i>Flying using FF points is becoming nearly impossible unless you're lucky enough to find one or two seats available at least 330 days out. </i>

You have to know how to work the system.

I was able to book a FRA-MSP business class award on Air Canada/Lufthansa for 50k US Air miles. Trip was booked last month for travel in March.

Hi sparkchaser,
Wow, that's incredible - business class for 50k miles! Any tips?

Yes.

If you don't have access to ANA's award search, use United's award search and make sure that you don't limit the results to United only. You just need to be flexible with your dates.

I'm sorry. I misspoke. It was 100k. Which is still a good deal.

Sorry for the confusion.

And this is why we need an edit function.

Well, we've been repeatedly told that we need to know how to "work the system" but I can say from experience that "the system" is not going to give you some cheapo rate when it already knows or at least thinks it knows just how many seats are going to go begging. It is that old "capacity controlled" thing and unless there are seats available you can work your butt off without favorable results.

In the past I have used the dedicated airline phone number for people at my level (Gold) and those people look and look and look. Sometimes it works as when we flew through Toronto from the East Coast US to get to Rome; other times not. And let's face it: the airlines know when people want to travel in any particular market and the most popular ones aren't going to have a lot of FF seats when the company thinks they can sell them at a better price.