Continental Airlines price changes
 

Hi,

My finance and I were looking into booking a return flight on Continental Airlines for March 7-18 from Toronto, Canada to Shannon, Ireland for our honeymoon yesterday afternoon and the price quoted on the website was $720 per person. We were going to plan out our trip based on the times available and book our flight in the evening but when we went back to their website that evening to book the price had jumped to $1,094 per person!

We've checked days around our arrival/departure date to see if leaving or arriving earlier or later would bring the price down but we are flying on the cheapest days.

Now we're not sure if we should book it at this price before it goes up more or wait and hope it comes down. We haven't flown before so we are not sure if these daily flucutations of the flight cost are normal? Is there hope for us to wait and get it cheaper or should we book asap?

Thanks!
Dawn

Dawn. Try another booking site for the same days ASAP. I have found prices to change on an airline website, but hold for a little while on places like Orbitz.
Use the same dates, etc. Or play around if you do not get the same results.

I remember one situation, when I was checking Orbitz, in which the price of a ticket more than doubled and then came back down to the initial price.

Airline pricing is completely mysterious to me. But the fluctuations you see can be quite normal.

i just tried the orbitz site but received the following error message:
We're sorry, Orbitz does not support flights that originate from Toronto Pearson International, Canada

So i don't think it works in Canada. I have tried Canadian travel sites like travelocity.ca, expedia.ca and itravel2000.com but they all give a price slightly higher than on the Continental Airlines website :(

I've been researching fares to Italy daily for a while. I've found that they are reasonable until the middle of March, then skyrocket. If your dates are at all flexible, try searching for a bit earlier in March. Try www.sidestep.com.

Two other good search sites are www.itasoftware.com and www.mobissimo.com. Do you get Travelzoo's weekly newsletter? Subscribe at www.travelzoo.com.

Hi Betsy, a friend (actually someone from Fodors) told me the same regarding fares -- that there's a big jump March.

So it's possible that pliant is seeing a real jump -- that would be unfortunate.

I think part of the problem is that there's no nonstop service to Dublin or Shannon from Toronto; everything has to connect either in NYC or Boston. Especially if pliant needs to use CO instead of other carriers, it may also be that CO is out of the cheapest class seats for direct connections through Newark, or that indeed the price has gone up, or both.

On ITA I can still see fares in the $600-$700 range on Aer Lingus ex-NYC, but that would mean flying to LaGuardia and transfering to JFK or EWR for the transatlantic leg.

I would really suggest that you look at London, which is better served, then backtracking to Ireland from there, using possibly Aer Lingus' low fares, or possibly BMI or one of the low cost types (which would probably entail having to go to an outlying London airport like Luton or Stansted. Or look at nonstops from NYC/BOS to Ireland and buy the connection from YYZ on a separate ticket. The total might be cheaper than one inclusive ticket.

Yah, its more expensive at the time we are travelling I think because of March break. But it is just frustrating that when I checked yesterday afternoon it was only $720 and then when I got home from work and went to book it, it had jumped to almost $1100. I wish I would have taken the time at work to book it but I didn't expect such an increase in just a few hours...

I'd been checking CO, too, and found that the prices are much higher this year than last. Last March, over "spring break", I flew PIT-CDG(connecting at EWR) for only $320. Have seen nothing near this, this year. Curious.

Fares can cahnge almost instantly, in any direction. On a few occasions CO site even returned a lower fare at the end of constructng an itinerary than I expected. In your case, there could be a number of reasons - the fare class sold out, for example. There is one thing you can do while fare shopping. CO for sure, and most other major airlines, will let you reserve for 24 hours without purchasing. Though the "fine print" will say that fares are not guaranteed until purchased, if you see fare you want to snag, go ahead and reserve and then you can come back within 24 hours to purchase. Most will lock in the fare for that 24 hour period.

Yes, we had looked into flights via Air Canada to London and then taking Aer Lingus from there. It works out to about $100 dollars cheaper but we didn't want to have to transfer from one airline to another or be worried about missing our second flight. We'd heard it takes a long time to get through Aer Lingus with a foreign passport. We'd rather just deal with one airline if possible.

Is there any airlines other than Continental that anyone knows of that offers this that I could check?

Hi Seamus,
I can't find that reserve thing you speak of on the Continental Airlines site. It just goes right through to purchasing and asks for credit card info...

Try the cheap flights forum at

http://eurotrip.com

If they don't know, no one does.

pliant, I suggest that you keep trying the Continental website for a few more days. When we took Continental to Switzerland last year, I checked their website for weeks ahead of time and one day it would be $1000, a day or two later it was $660 and it would go up and down every few days. The first time it jumped to $1000 it scared me, but I waited and it went back down to $660 a couple of days later. I think you'll be able to fly for less than $1100, so I'd suggest you just keep checking and then pounce on a good fare when it goes back down. I've also heard that some airlines release some low cost seats at midnight on Tuesday, so it might we worth staying up and checking at that time.

I'm not sure what you meant about Aer Lingus with foreign passports - your transit through London would not involve immigration or customs.

Prices from Chicago to Shannon using American and Aer Lingus via Heathrow (again, no customs until you arrive in Ireland) are around US$350 for your days; I can't imagine you'd have trouble getting to O'Hare from Toronto, with the total price still way less than Continental's.

The UK and the Republic of Ireland share a "common travel area", so you'll go through UK customs in London, and then the UK-Ireland flight will be just like a domestic, with no passport control.

Last year I was trying to buy our tickets to Europe online at the Delta web site and found them for $1,580.00
RT for two but I wanted to see what American Airline charged and they were like $200.00 more so I went back to Delta to buy them and the price went up
to $1,776.00 I was only gone for maybe 2 minutes! I called Delta to ask about prices and was given the $1,580.00 fare
so I bought them over the phone. I went back to the web site and it still showed the $1,776.00 fare? Unbelievable.

Yah, we called Continental Airlines right after we noticed the increased price in the evening but the price they gave us over the phone was even more than was listed on the website :( this flight stuff is no fun...

Do you know if the price is likely to go up (it's a stupid question, in a way -- if you do you wouldn't be asking here)? I've no idea what's considered reasonable for flights from your area.

I guess my point is that these prices are close to the highest you've seen, then perhaps hold out for a few days. More likely than that they'll probably come down. If not, the chances that they will go up even further are small.

That's what I'd do -- but then, it's your money.

I see fares on Aer Lingus in the $600's on beta.itasoftware.com. And you can connect through Chicago O'Hare to avoid an airport change in NYC.

$656 via Chicago and Dublin. Depart YYZ as late as 4pm and arrive 9am in SNN. Not too bad.

As for CO, it's probably because they sold out of the cheapest seats (remember, each flight has many fare classes, even if they're all economy) on either the YYZ-EWR or EWR-SNN leg. Airline pricing is something that's too complicated for anybody to understand.

Is it possible that more flights will be added that start again at the cheaper price? If its not possible that more flights are going to be added I think a should book now before it moves up into an even more expensive class...

Hi there,
I've been watching the March flights from Boston to Dublin (and Shannon) for the last week, and the prices have been jumping upwards, with fewer and fewer available flights it seems. I had one flight I liked for $427RT but when I clicked to purchase it on Orbitz, I was told the flight was no longer available. WHen I tried to go through American AIrlines directly, I clicked on purchase, but was told that the price had increased to $700 and change. FInally, last night, I sat down again on my computer, and ran into the same problems on Orbitz, but was able to get two multi-destination tickets (Boston to Shannon, Dublin to Boston) March 10-21 for $377 each (that includes all fees, taxes). That said, I wouldnt wait too much longer before buying your tickets. Good lucK!!!

Hi, pliant,
Delete any cookies from continental from your computer. Then recheck for your flights' prices. You will have to do delete the cookies each time you finish with the continental website.

Sometimes, a higher price will result if you keep checking a flight with the cookies still on your computer. Don't know why this is. Possibly because they realize you really want that flight and may be willing to pay if you think the other price category is gone.

That's a very interesting tip, niblette.

Good news! When got in the evening I checked the Continental site again and the flight had gone down to $879 CND per person so I booked it right away. Thanks for all your help! :)