How far in advance to book flights
 

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.

I posted this on the Airline forum but thought there might be more traffic here.

Thanks again, Michele :)

Airfares change daily. I look at Travilocity to get a general idea. We also do the same 330 days out for business-the return part is hard since buz seats could be gone if you want both ends. I ended up having to buy 2 one ways on Lufthansa so I could organize my trip-Ouch!!! Never could get the upgrade coming home but at least the going part-which is more grueling-Hope this helps chris

Airfares change daily. I look at Travilocity to get a general idea. We also do the same 330 days out for business-the return part is hard since buz seats could be gone if you want both ends. I ended up having to buy 2 one ways on Lufthansa so I could organize my trip-Ouch!!! Never could get the upgrade coming home but at least the going part-which is more grueling-Hope this helps chris

You can't get a price that far out since airlines don't have schedules loaded. I checked ita and flights are only loaded through Nov 27, 2011 (they are a search only site that provides software for some of the online travel sites/airlines). If you go directly to the airlines own website, you will see they are not booking past the Nov.2011 date.

I've seen some sales pop up in January for May flights the last couple of years.

You should sign up for fare alerts on several sites. I would also look at flying into MXP (they can train from there to Venice for about 35€) as flights have been cheapest to there in my most recent searches. From my area, the cheapest flights for that general area are in and out of ZRH.

Search ITA using their calendar feature so you can tell at a glance which are the cheapest days (usually Tues,Wed,Thur)and it doesn't appear you care which airline. The first half of May is always cheaper than late May. Summer rates tend to start with a jump in mid May and sometimes another jump mid June.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Thanks chris and kybourbon for the help. I will definitely sign up for fare alerts, good idea. I did use the matrix website but just with specific dates. Will use the calendar feature also. Thanks.

Wow, thanks Kybourbon. Selecting MXP saves $300 pp. That is the kind of helpful hints I need. :-d