When to buy airline tickets to Europe?
 

Last year I flew to Rome in May. I bought my $850. tickets 6 months before the flight from Iberia airlines. It seemed like a good price.

In late March, Iberia offered a special $650 rate on the internet. Because I had bought my tickets by phone, they refused to lower the cost of my ticket.

Ok, I see their point but I am surprised they would not reduce my fare. This May I am planning to fly to Paris. Question, when should I purchase my tickets and should I use the internet or directly by phone?

I personally feel using the internet is good. Unless you have a difficult planning schedule. I would check every so often. I just found Paris for Nov for $360 r.t on United out of Chicago. I feel $400 is a good price out of Chicago. I have not paid any higher in the last year and I have gone 3 times.

Most likely, there wil be recurring, more-or-less identical opportunities for the &quot;best&quot; bargain (which is not always the <i>lowest</i> price) throughout the period from mid-November to mid-February.

Best wishes,

Rex

Increasingly the airlines' revenue management software looks at when you're traveling, not when you're buying the ticket. Thus winter fares will tend to apply to winter trips. So if you're flying in May don't expect a fare you find in March will be valid two months later.

Rex and Gardyloo are right. The cheapest fares are in the off season. I'm fortunate to be able to go anytime I want. I realize many people can only travel in the summer. I've long felt that Americans have too little vacation time. Even if you are tied down by having kids in school, just having say one extra week to take a break from work would help. I'm taking almost the entire month of Nov off and will have had 9 weeks off this year. No complaints. :)

I've never had an airline tell me they couldn't refund (or voucher) a ticket if the fare went down...whether I've bought via phone or internet, although I've not had experience with Iberia mine have been with US carriers. Typically the way the refund works is the sale fare has to be good for your travel dates, where a sale may encompass your dates...the sale fare can be sold out on your particular dates, if that is the case you are out of luck. Most do not refund in the form of credit to your credit card, although I did have American do that once, typcially the refund is in the form of a voucher only good for that airline and expires in one year, and you don't have to necessarily travel within a one year but must book your flight within a year.

I'm not sure where you are originating, but if from east coast $850 is high for May....$650 is good.

I generally play the waiting game with airline tickets...wait for a sale then jump on it asap. The best way to do this is to monitor the flights frequently. You can watch to see how full they are getting by tapping into the seat maps online. A good tool for this is using www.itn.net One issue with this is generally you don't have access to foreign carriers seat maps...however you can always call them. Also bear in mind about 20% of seats on any given flight are automatically blocked off (exit row, bulkhead, etc). A good tool to use to keep an eye on fares is Sidestep it searches multiple vendors (airlines, Expedia, Orbitz, Cheaptickets, etc) at one time, go to www.sidestep.com

The best fares can be gotten by remaining flexible with dates. If you have particular dates you need to travel on then it is best not to wait.

Good luck with it.

Maybe anot of clarification is in order. When I said that that there will be opportunities mid-November to mid-February, I was referring to the (probable) fact that tickets <i>for May travel</i> will likely be available at the best bargains during this period. Of course, it is also the period when fares for actual travel are generally lowest (and fares for these dates are already on sale and have been for a month or more). The fares for May will not likely be quite as low as the dead of winter - - but wintr is when you will most likely find the best May fares.

3 wks ahead of time.

Great suggestions by all.

Traveler, I called all numbers at Iberia and asked to talk to managers and ect. I even called the main office to talk to customer relations and was told &quot;we don't do that here&quot; period. They have lost a good customer, period.

I believe the revenue management people, or software that they use, consider both when you will travel, and when you are buying the ticket. In other words, fares tend to be lower in low season and higher in high season, but if you went in now and tried to buy a ticket for Winter 2005 (low season), you would find the price would be very high; if you went in 4 months prior to the date of the flight to 2 months prior to the date of the flight, you would find the price much lower; I think if you go in after two months prior to the date of the flight, you will find the fare creeping up again, and if you go in a few days before the date of the flight you will pay through the nose. All this is subject, of course, to the occasional extraordinary sales which happen surprisingly frequently, but always require that you have the flexibility to go in right now and buy a ticket for whatever month to whichever place.

More and more airlines are charging a fee to change a non-refundable ticket, so if you buy early and the price later comes down, you are out of luck. I think the airlines who don't do this are few, and those who will actually return your money (as opposed to issuing a voucher) have changed to issuing vouchers. That makes sense, because it almost guarantees them future business.

I've been sticking to Continental recently as there are some benefits to having status in their FF program, and I know with Continental, the lowest prices they offer are through their website. If you call to buy a ticket, you will always pay a little more, as the prices available to their phone representatives are higher than those available at the web site. I have read that some airlines are tacking on a fee if you call or visit to buy your tickets.

Personally, I pick a time and place to fly well in the future, and a price that I will be happy with, then I wait for a sale and monitor prices and if my price hasn't come up by sixty days before my planned flight date, I change my plans. Once I buy the ticket, I don't waste my time worrying about a lower price coming up, as I am busy planning other aspects of the trip. If you want the flexibility of changing your ticket when a lower price comes up, look into buying an undiscounted ticket, but I'm pretty sure few of us would want to spend that much money for a flight, as it is often five or six times the cost of the deeply discounted ticket.

Oops, hit enter too soon.

The best place I have found to get expert opinion not from the airline on situations like yours is the Flyertalk forums at http://www.flyertalk.com

Click on forums, then on airline programs, then on other european (apparently Iberia doesn't warrant their own forum), then read the postings to see if there is any relevant information. To post your question, you will have to register. Beware that many of the posters there are so deep in the subject that they speak in acronyms; they would say FCO instead of Rome, and Y ticket instead of undiscounted tourist class fare, but they have really helped me on some sticky situations I have gotten myself into.

Hi SS,

If you bought a non-cancellable, non-refundable, non-exchanable, non-changeable ticket, it wouldn't matter how you bought it.

From where are you flying to Paris.

Clevelandbrown,
I have never been charged a fee to get a refund when the price goes down. It technically is not changing the ticket although does take some reticketing obviously to get the lower fare. Its not like you are changing dates or flights. It can be any type of ticket, non-refundable, etc. The airlines, at least the ones I've had experience with refunds (AA, UA and US) are good about this because they don't want to discourage you from buying your tickets early and bank on the fact that most people don't go back later to recheck fares and get a refund. I've done it many times...I'm one of those that keeps checking, its only a few seconds on the computer then a phone call to the airline that can sometimes save hundreds of dollars. I once had 11 people refunded $368 each...that was quite a savings and well worth the phone call. You may even want to call the airline you plan to buy tickets with and ask that question, what if the price goes down? See what they're policy is, it can vary from airline to airline.

Surf,
Thats unfortunate Iberia doesn't do that, not good customer relations...I'll remember that if I'm ever in the market again for tickets to Spain or other Iberia route.

Rex,
Yes you are very correct with seasons and typical times of the year sales occur for the upcoming season. I just did want to add sometimes it varies by the airline, take United for example...they run some bizarre sales sometimes far in advance. Twice I've gotten incredible fares about 8 months in advance with them. And they seem less likely for good sales during normal sale season where as take British Airways for example, can usually count on them for a sale at usual timing...~3-4 months in adv. I guess the bottomline is if you know you're traveling say now for next summer start checking now, you never know.

And of course I didn't mean that the cost of tickets bought earlier for May travel will be the same as those bought in April or May. The float on your hundreds of dollars means something to cash-strapped airlines, for sure.

I would visit www.itasoftware.com and take the time to learn their syntax. ITA forms part of the booking engine software used by various companies, including, as of last night, American Airlines (also Orbitz.) You can't (yet) book through ITA, but it's a very fast way of scanning the bazillion options for routing, timing and cost. Combine it with www.whichbudget.com for the LCCs that don't subscribe to the big res. systems, and you've got a huge resource for flight planning.

Gardyloo,
What an excellent resource. I went to itasoftware.com and did some initial poking around I really like the fact you can search with a range of airports within hundreds of miles radius and day before/day after dates, number of stops. The returns are great too, you get a composite listing of all flight possibilities with notes, overnight, change of airport, long layover and even saw one mention two legs were prop planes. Great thing to have, thank you! I'll check whichbudget next.

I've not been charged a fee for a refund of the difference when the price drops either, so Iberia seems to be following a different set of policies.

Just called a couple of weeks ago, as the price on our Budapest tickets dropped $80 pp. Had no trouble with AA getting a credit back on our credit card by just calling. It's one of the reasons I like seeing if there's a AA codeshare with a similar price for some of these partner flights.

Traveler863, just a cautionary note about the Sidestep program(www.sidestep.com). I met a couple in Puerto Rico that highly recommended it because it covers travel discounts in many fields (rentals, flights ect.).

After I downloaded it, I started to have problems. Every time I went to a travel related site, it would produce a pop-up that also gave rates and bargains on that topic.

Some of the information was useful but it was disturbing that I was being given information when it was not asked for.

A friend looked into it and concluded that a spyware program had been produced during my Sidestep download. Actually my friend?s spyware program detector labeled Sidestep as a browser highjacker. It was simple to uninstall but I would not use it again.

Clifton,
Yes AA is one of the better ones for refunds, particularly because they refund with credit to your credit card. I had that happen myself but just once...and that was my most recent experience with them, before that they always refunded in the form of a voucher. Perhaps they've changed their policies for the better.