Airline ticket Prices

[randpchi]

Sorry. I did not realize at first you had a specific date, price is right at 800
June 17. The website is worth looking at for comparing airfare from different airlines and cities.

 

[urbaneve71]

if you sign up with ebates -- i know priceline is offering 13% cash back at the moment -- that is about a 100 savings. just FYI

 

[KeithG]

Question for you more experienced travelers.

When is the best timeframe to buy airline tickets? I searched this morning and came up with $800each on United (via aaa.com). Any suggestions/tips/tricks would be appreciated. I noticed the travel agent selling the package is supposed to be able to arrange tickets. Do they generally have good prices or are we likely to pay more for the convenience of one stop shopping?

Travel agents "may" be able to get you much lower airfare prices when they function as a consolidator: they buy blocks of flight tickets on popular flights and then resell them to you. This only works for popular destinations and flight times. And you often have limited choice of flights. We find the same thing for some resort packages. Our travel agent can get a better rate than we can at the Divi in Bonaire. We booked our own flights, but book the resort and diving through the travel agent. For our scuba travel we have never found lower flight prices from a travel agent than we can get ourselves.

As for when to buy? When prices are cheap. Airfare prices go up and down all the time. Seemingly randomly. Prices of different seat choices on the same flight sometimes make no sense. My wife has (more than once) booked business class tickets to London cheaper than economy tickets on the same flight. She was thinking about booking a vacation to Scotland and noticed that prices has dropped by more than 50%, so she booked some seats. A few days later prices were back to normal.

You need to watch and wait...

 

[Jayfarmlaw]

I have seen several posts that reference Tuesday mornings is the best time to book tickets. It seems to hold true for flights to Cozumel. Another thing we will do is check prices out of Oklahoma City, which is 20 miles from the house, as well as Dallas. Most of the time it is cheaper out of OKC....with a connection through Dallas. Go figure... Check several airports for departures.

I will usually run a Matrix search or Google Flights search, Skiplagged search, and Check booking direct with the airlines as well. We try to book a couple of months out....supposedly 6 weeks is the magic time frame....but we have found cheap flights with as little as 2 weeks before as well.

Google flights and Souhwest have calendars for air fares that will compare prices for the entire month, sometime a couple of days difference can drop the fare considerably.

Some airlines will give you a refund if you call and the flights are cheaper at a given point as well.

Good luck, safe travels.
Jay

 

[gopbroek]

As Jay said above, check the pricing from feeder cities as opposed to the fortress hub of a carrier. The carrier's may often compete on those route combinations if they have flights feeding multiple different carrier's hubs. As to the example of OKC it has feeder routes to DFW, ATL and IAH, each are domestic fortress hubs that have direct flights to Roatan (and Cozumel).

Another good tool I have found is to look at the WIKI site for an airport. Usually it will list the carrier's that serve the airport and the cites with direct flights. For Roatan it is:
Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Hagan34]

last time I went by air, Delta flew from Atlanta, United flew from Huston direct (2 flights Sat/Sun only). another option is fly to San Pedro Sula and ferry or local flight to Coxen hole

 

[urbaneve71]

im finding prices around 615 -- if you sign up for ebates -- priceline is offering 13% cash back. And you receive it in an actual check. PM me for details.

 

[FishgutsB]

Just book Delta out of Myrtle Beach for $602 . It dropped down from $900 the last few weeks. One stop in Atlanta .

 

[BDSC]

Has anyone flown from Florida to Roatan in the past that is willing to share their fare prices? Honestly, I don't even know what a good deal on these flights would be.

We went to Anthonys Key this past April. So it was about this time last year I started watching airfare. We were flying out of Raleigh/Durham. Like others have said, there is no rhyme or reason on how pricing works. There is no "best time" to buy.

I would check Delta, American, and United twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the evening. I did it every single day. One morning I get to work and the price on Delta had dropped from right around $685 to $498 r/t. I sent out and email to my group and we all jumped on it. It stayed at that price for about 36 hours and then went back up.

I have no idea if it ever went back down as obviously we stopped looking. I do think you may pay a bit more if you book thru an agent as sometimes they charge a booking fee of around $25 to $30. Good luck and just keep checking every day.

 

[JamesBon92007]

I never use a travel agent. My experience is there is no rhyme or reason on when you will find low fares. I just keep a look out and set some fare alerts. I have found low fares anytime between a year to three weeks out with no understandable pattern discerned.

My experience is the same. My girlfriend found fares for $300 RT from LAX to Bonaire but she didn't act quickly enough. One time I bought tickets via a Travelocity alert--$335 RT from San Diego to Kona. Someone mentioned Tuesday--I've heard that but I've never been able to ascertain if it's a fact or an urban myth. My gf's sister is a travel agent and she's never found us lower fares than we can find ourselves.

Often times the really low fares have restrictions such as you must leave on a particular day and return on a particular day, for example either 3 days or 8 days. Other "great" deals have many stops and a 5 hour flight (if direct) might take you 24 hours.