Purchase Timing For International Air Tickets

[jfchandler]

I grew up with the general idea imprinted in my mind: to get the best airfare prices, you always want to buy well in advance of your travel, not only because it aids in travel planning, but also because at least in the U.S., there tend to be a lot of advance purchase discounts and prices get higher if you try to just buy and fly...at least for domestic flights.

Now however, I'm beginning to question the wisdom of that philosophy, at least for international air travel between the U.S. and Thailand... Here's why....

I recently returned from a Thanksgiving (late November) trip back to Los Angeles. I purchased the tickets online about a month and a half ahead of the travel via the American Airlines web site, and paid about $1,100 all in for a one-stop code share flight thru Japan with Japan Airlines and onward to L.A. on an AA plane...

That was absolutely the best price I could find at the time, and I had spent a lot of time (at least two months) prior looking. Normally, I'd travel instead at Christmas time, but as I monitored airfare prices throughout September and October, the best price I could find for a Christmas time roundtrip was about $1300 all in, and that wasn't a particularly flyer friendly itinerary... The better layover and travel flights were all $1400 or higher...

Just today, though, I happened to go back to the American Airlines web site and found similar roundtrip fares between BKK and LA leaving around Dec. 23 and returning around Dec. 29 for about $1050 all in... just slightly less than what I had paid for the same flights/itinerary at Thanksgiving time.

Now, back in Sept and Oct. I had checked the same web site and the same resources for those same dates, and at that time, they were offering nothing close to $1050... But now... about a week before the travel dates, I discover if I had waited I could have actually bought a Christmas ticket for about $1050.... provided I was willing to wait to buy the ticket until just prior to my intended travel dates....

Similarly, I looked ahead on the AA web site today toward June 2011, the other time of the year when I typically travel. And to my dismay, the lowest prices today were even higher....and I looked at the entire month of June, day to day.... $1600 or higher was the normal roundtrip ticket price for the same route....

So all of this is making me thing, at least for airfares, it's best to not buy in advance.... But rather, wait until just before your intended travel dates and at that point, the airlines likely are needing to unload the unsold tickets that are sitting on the shelf....with not much time left before they lose the opportunity to sell anything...

Anyone have similar or different experiences on this???

[JusMe]

I've been doing some long range thinking and planning for a trip back to Canada next summer.

So I stopped in at the airline office to enquire about schedules and prices.

I can book a one way flight in June for just less than half of the price of the return ticket, coming back in October.

A one way is usually nearer two thirds of the return price, but here it's less than half? I asked about that, and was told that as they didn't know what will happen to prices in the latter part of next year, they're quoting me a return price based on what might happen.

Nothing devious from the airline, and open about the pricing, but seems rather strange. I've got to be the one to make plans and take some chances. If I take the one way, can I get back here for the same price, or will a one way ticket bought in the summer be much more? Maybe I can get a return ticket there for the following summer at a better price?

Nothing's assured, so often it's just a case of getting something and knowing exactly what you're getting - at least the price is set.

[THAILIBAN]

I have a similar experience booking my flight to Europe for XMas.

the thing is: During such a period, most people do not want to take the risk to wait and book early.

For June, no need to book early, there will be plenty of promotions for that low-season-period, you can easily find a competitive fare 2-3 weeks in advance.

depends on how flexible you are with your traveling dates and the airline

[CharlieH]

As a general rule I have always found that buying around 30 days before travelling has always worked well for me.

[californiabeachboy]

I believe things have changed with the advent of computers. They have these complicated programs to set the prices. Too far in advance and they think you need to be there for a specific date (i.e a wedding) and will charge the most. Wait too late and they will think you had something come up and and will pay whatever it takes.

I have flown many times over the last few years across the Pacific from USA. As with a prior post, I have found that from four weeks to eight weeks before your flight you will get the best price - they want to make sure they fill up the plane.

[lomatopo]

Are you buying USA-BKK-USA or BKK-USA-BKK? {You should be buying USA-BKK-USA if you can arrange the timing. USA-BKK, stay for 3 months, finish the itin. BKK-USA, stay for a few days, then start another USA-BKK-USA itin.} {Also you should be using a consolidator who can save you up to 25%.}

There are so many variables that it is nearly impossible to make a specific recommendation but generally you should buy as far in advance as you can as long as you are sure of your travel dates and are happy with the value. Also if you are interested in upgrading then the earlier you ticket the higher up the wait-list you might be.

There are eleven (11) economy fare buckets: YBMHQVWSKLT so USA-BKK-USA $950 all in for a T fare and $3,300 for a Y fare, same seat, different rules. {Prices for a specific city-pair, season, bucket stay the same, its the inventory that changes causing you to buy a higher priced bucket.} Obviously the SKLTWVQ fares sell out first. Also Mon-Thu (X in the fare code) fares are slightly less than Fri-Sun (W for weekend in the fare code). Now you have seasons: low, shoulder, high, peak (for AA based on US seasons, peak = summer, not Thailand tourist seasons. Now you might have promotions but those are really just SKLT fares made available by increasing the bucket size. Finally some fare buckets have APEX requirements (advanced purchase), say of 21 days, so if you are inside that expect to pay more.

Its a bit complex, and only really worth understanding if you travel a lot. I can tell you that your conclusion:

"So all of this is making me thing, at least for airfares, it's best to not buy in advance.... But rather, wait until just before your intended travel dates and at that point, the airlines likely are needing to unload the unsold tickets that are sitting on the shelf....with not much time left before they lose the opportunity to sell anything..."

is quite common, but totally inaccurate. Obviously with a perishable commodity (airline seat) you would think this to be the case, but airlines do not do this simply because consumers would wait until prices come down to buy. In fact, airlines charge the most for last-minute tickets as these are Y fares and usually purchased by people who have to fly ASAP. Some people even think airlines auction seats at the airport, resulting in nearly free tickets.

{Much of the details here are based on U.S. carriers but other airlines are moving towards this model, if they;re not there already. Also note that U.S. airlines got a record amount of revenue in baggage/change fees so far this year:

"According to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistic (BTS) U.S. airlines raked in $4.3 billion in fees in the first three quarters of this year. Those fees were for baggage and changing an airline ticket."

It should be noted that this revenue is not subject to the 7.5% federal tax on airline tickets, nor are fuel surcharges [YQ]. They are also not subject to corporate travel discounts. This tax, BTW, goes towards maintaining the air traffic control system, among other things, so more tax shortfalls.}

Edited December 16, 2010 by lomatopo

[Xircal]

What I tend to do is to sign up to the frequent flyer programs of all the airlines which fly to the destination I want to go to. Once you're on their maling lists, you'll get bags of special offers usually up to 6 months in advance which gives you plenty of time to plan your trip.

In addition, these programs will earn you air miles in one form or another which are well worth the effort because on long haul flights, they soon add up. You can then redeem these either for a seat upgrade, or if you've saved enough of them, for a free flight somewhere.

[jfchandler]

Loma, it's a nice discussion of industry trends and practices.... But, your conclusion doesn't fit with the fact of my experience....

I searched online almost daily for an economy BKK-LAX-BKK roundtrip ticket at many many online sources throughout August and September, and never found a fare for Christmas week below $1200, and obviously most of them much higher...

So, I finally did the Thanksgiving week trip on AA for about $1100 all in...and was able to find that fare about one more before those travel dates.

Then this week, one week (not one to two months) before my intended original Christmas travel dates of 12/23 departure and 12/29 return, I found the $1050 fare on the AA web site... Not for every day.... not for multiple days... but for just one available day outbound and one available day returning....

If I had tried to buy the same Christmas week ticket one or two months before those intended travel dates, I know for certain (because I was pricing tickets constantly throughout that advance period) that I would have paid $1300 or more....

Likewise, my checking about the future June 2011 travel suggests the same likely situation... Checking now 7 months ahead of time, the BKK-LAX-BKK prices are sky high for regular economy....

Also, re your comment about tickets starting in LA vs. BKK doesn't match my experience also.... I used to always do LAX-BKK-LAX tickets, especially when I was flying every six months or so... But then, as I began to travel yearly instead, I switched to the BKK-LAX-BKK tickets because it was hard to find economical "year return" tickets...instead of the more standard 3 or 6 month varieties...

During that transition, I did a lot of checking and fare comparisons for identical travel dates and carriers starting in LA vs. starting in BKK.... The results bounced around a bit... but overall, I couldn't find any clear trend showing that starting with an LA (or USA) flight origin ticket was going to yield a better price than starting with a BKK one (currency fluctuations aside)....

Interestingly, re my AA ticket purchase that I did online via their web site, perhaps because my billing address for the credit card used is my USA residence, I was charged in U.S. $ and not Thai baht.... even though the trip started and ended in BKK.

[elliss]

Loma, it's a nice discussion of industry trends and practices....

i travel four times a year lon-bkk -lon.

i used to book well in advance , not any more .

over the last two years i have noticed there are far less people coming to bkk.

despite what the tourist authority tell us.

i book 4 weeks in advance ,BUT

on last minute flights , up to three days before dept,

there are some good offers. :jap:

they are desperate for bums on seats .

[SantiSuk]

i travel four times a year lon-bkk -lon.

i used to book well in advance , not any more .

over the last two years i have noticed there are far less people coming to bkk.

despite what the tourist authority tell us.

i book 4 weeks in advance ,BUT

on last minute flights , up to three days before dept,

there are some good offers. :jap:

they are desperate for bums on seats .

If we all start booking late it will be a sure fire recipe for price hikes on the late bookers. The airlines invest quite a bit of thought into their pricing algorithms. It's also in their interests to persuade us with their pricing not to leave it too late - the standby fares of 20 years ago long since disappeared.

My experience on London to BKK (I do about 6 return trips a year) is similar to a previous poster. Gets cheapest in the period of say 4 months to 2 months out, but then starts to get progressively more expensive in the last couple of months. I haven't noticed cheap late deals but haven't looked to fly in the last few days and won't travel with fringe carriers or very indirect routes.

I don't share the view that here are far less people coming to Thailand than 2 years ago. The direct flights from London and via the Middle east I find to be mostly full like 2 years ago and I think there are just as many flights as before. When you take account of new regional UK routes via the Middle East, maybe more. Swampy is one hell of a lot busier than 2 years ago. Loads of Russians, Koreans and Chinese.

[jfchandler]

Santi, just wondering, since you're already buying your tickets one or two months ahead of your travel dates, perhaps you're not continuing to test price the same trip after you already have your ticket, say in the last several weeks before your travel...

Usually, people shop and price their tickets BEFORE their purchase, but not many continue to price and test the same flight after they've bought their ticket but before their actual travel...

Perhaps, you'd be surprised what you might find if you kept testing and pricing right up until the date of your travels...

[bifftastic]

Interesting stuff, thanks everyone.

I've been checking tickets for my trip to Thailand next April and noticed they were more expensive this far ahead than last time I booked (£500 instead of £400), which was around 7 or 8 weeks before travelling. They've just started to come down a little to around £470/80 ish but this time I will continue to monitor after I decide to buy, just out of curiosity.

[jfchandler]

I was shocked this week when I started looking at the AA web site (which incorporates flights from their alliance partners such as JAL and Cathay Pacific) for their pricing on BKK-LAX-BKK trips for this coming June... $1600 or $1700 or more were common economy fare prices for the entire month of June.... and their web site allows you to check their fares for all different varieties of flights on a day by day basis....and I did that for the entire month.

That compares, as I mentioned above, about me being able to find a $1050 fare for the same flight for Christmas week just earlier this week, about one week ahead of those travel dates...

I think I can almost absolutely guarantee, that if I'm shopping for the same June flights on the AA web site come May or early June vs. now, I'm going to be able to find better fares than the $1600-$1700 on offer now -- barring some market jarring event such as a precipitous runup in fuel prices or some unexpected calamity....

I can't prove it...but I do think there's something going on with the airlines fare pricing systems that basically, when you get to the final days before the flight and there are any remaining open seats on the flight, concludes that it's better for the airline to sell the remaining tickets at some price, if possible, rather than have empty seats -- especially for the international flights....

As I said at the beginning of this thread, I was always told growing up to buy your air tickets ahead.... But at least for the Thailand to USA flights, I'm finding no advantage to following that approach.

[craigt3365]

I have had the same experiences as the OP. I purchased tickets for travel early December 2010 to early January 2011 from BKK to Las Vegas. I searched for months, and know how to search fairly well. I do this trip about 2 times every year. I finally found a fare of $1150, and bought it immediately.

After that, prices went up. The cheapest I could find 1 week before the trip was $1300. 5 years ago I was paying $850, return.

I've been traveling all over the world for many years. 90% of the time, buying a ticket near your departure date is more money. 10% of the time, you will save a few bucks. But not a huge amount, unless you are really lucky.

One year, I waited until 2 weeks before a departure from the US to Japan. I ended up spending more than 30% over my lowest fare 3 months before departure.

Also, from the US, June-August is very expensive....to anywhere!

[Ricardo]

<snip for brevity>

I can't prove it...but I do think there's something going on with the airlines fare pricing systems that basically, when you get to the final days before the flight and there are any remaining open seats on the flight, concludes that it's better for the airline to sell the remaining tickets at some price, if possible, rather than have empty seats -- especially for the international flights....

As I said at the beginning of this thread, I was always told growing up to buy your air tickets ahead.... But at least for the Thailand to USA flights, I'm finding no advantage to following that approach.

The marginal cost of the extra passenger to the airline, tax & meals & extra-fuel to carry the weight of the person & handle their bags, is relatively small. But a scheduled-airline still has to operate the flight, crewing it & lifting a heavy aircraft from A to B, whether it's full or only half-full. Hence the last-minute wish to up the load-factor, so long as it doesn't build an expectation of cheap late-fares always being available.

But the pricing is driven more by seasonal market-demand, and the willingness of passengers to switch to a longer/less-convenient indirect-route, where excess-capacity is still available, in order to save money.

The limited-entry of Low-Cost-Carriers (Air Asia Express for example) into long-haul travel, although only adding a little extra capacity so far, may well upset the previous orderly cartels ! Something similar happened on the transatlantic-routes, when affinity-group charters & the-then-LCCs like Laker Airways or People Express tried to establish themselves, in the 70s & 80s. Fares on the legacy-carriers also fell, for a while at least, and their profits also fell, and some of the carriers failed (remember TWA or Pan-Am ?).

Those of us flying from Europe to Asia are also seeing a price-gain, from the emergence of large lower-cost airlines building new hubs in the Middle-East, such as Emirates or Qatar or Etihad amongst others.

Airline-alliances represent an attempt to reduce this competition between airlines, not as often claimed just to boost inter-connections and common service-standards, although they can sometimes also result in actual cost-savings to them (sharing premium-lounges, maintenance-support, ticketing-systems, etc.) in the longer-run.

Yield-management by airlines is a fine art, backed by some very heavy computer-systems, and one can only say, as a customer on the receiving-end, to check the alternatives & only buy a ticket when you're fairly-happy with the price/route on-offer.

I suspect that we'll be looking at prices on TV, complaining about perceived price-increases or lack-of-seats, for ever. In the internet-age, we can at least communicate more-efficiently than before, if we make the effort, and attempt to fight back on-behalf of the consumer !

Darn, where is there a smilie, wearing a kilt, when I need one ? !

[robbiecia]

Interesting topic.

I will be going to Madrid in early march 2011.

Started checking the price 3 months ago (october)

Bkk-Mad-Bkk was fluctuating from 22k-24k (Egypt air)

On the day (mid oct) it dropped to 20k,i nailed a couple of tickets.

Went and checked the price today for the same travel dates in march 2011,

They are now 33k.

[Mario2008]

Don't forget that there is not only tourist class and business class. Within these classes airlines have subclasses, with more or less restrictions on the ticket and price differences accordingly. The person next to you might well have paid much more (or less) than you for the same seat.

Airlines have within tourist class maybe 80 seats for $1,000, than 60 for $1,200, etc. Booking early for seats in the peak seasons will make it easier to obtain the cheaper tickets.

During off-season you can wait longer and see if there are any promotions.

[jfchandler]

I use Kayak.com as one of my main resources for shopping for and monitoring international airfare ticket prices...

Interestingly, after seeing nothing but $1200 plus fares to Los Angeles for the past several months, just in the past week or so, Kayak also began showing a $950 RT economy fare for Christmas time on China Eastern, which I've flown once before and which was OK....

I've already taken my trip, so I wasn't looking to buy. But even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have done this one for the price.... It involved overnight layovers (flight arrives in late afternoon and departs the next morning) both going and returning in Shanghai PuDong, which has got to be one of the most boring airports in the world, and a total travel time to L.A. of more than 30 hours in both directions....

Once again, China Eastern's fares for Christmas had all been above $1200 in recent months... And then suddenly in the past week, they're showing a bunch of $950 fares for the same travel period.... just in week or few weeks before the flight.

[lomatopo]

I was shocked this week when I started looking at the AA web site (which incorporates flights from their alliance partners such as JAL and Cathay Pacific) for their pricing on BKK-LAX-BKK trips for this coming June... $1600 or $1700 or more were common economy fare prices for the entire month of June.... and their web site allows you to check their fares for all different varieties of flights on a day by day basis....and I did that for the entire month.

June-August are peak fare season for the U.S. This when fares are the highest to/from the U.S. regardless of the season in the destination/origination point.

AA, like other airlines, have fare seasons, usually denoted in the second position of the fare basis, a six character code you can usually find in your e-ticket documentation:

P: peak season

H: high season

K: shoulder season

L: low season

M: other seasonal restriction

Again this is a vastly complicated topic and not worth learning about unless you travel ~ 100,000 miles per year, on the same carrier with the same city-pairs.

On Dec 23 2010 ~ 4 million people will fly commercially. The OP's single data point is thus one in four million. This personal bias, "100% of the time I had this result" almost always leads us to a simple, reassuring but erroneous conclusion. This is normal. We struggle to comprehend a very complex world which is sometime overwhelming, so we come up with the easiest and simplest conclusion. Its like, "Oh, its cold today so global warming must be a myth" - sorry to steal a phrase Fox News has probably copyrighted.

The OP has found a method of purchasing airline tickets that he thinks is both unique and perhaps unheard of. He is happy with the results. He is able to get a ticket for his travel dates at what he considers a fair value. That is all that is important to an individual consumer. He should continue this process, waiting until 10 days or less, to purchase all his future airline tickets. And maybe report back here on the success of his experiences. I assume he is continuing to check the prices on his upcoming trip to track any further price decreases. With this logic the ticket could possibly be free by the day of travel.

"I can't prove it...but I do think there's something going on with the airlines fare pricing systems that basically, when you get to the final days before the flight and there are any remaining open seats on the flight, concludes that it's better for the airline to sell the remaining tickets at some price, if possible, rather than have empty seats -- especially for the international flights...."

Again, this is a very, very common belief, even among relatively savvy people, but it is incorrect (unless your sample size is one in four million). Anyone who waits until the last day to book travel has to fly so the airline charges them the most money. I know this is a very difficult concept for people to accept, given we are talking about a perishable commodity, but it is true and accurate.

Generally speaking, you should buy your airline ticket as soon as your travel dates are firm, you find a price to be a fair value for you and other parameters (carrier, schedule, FF program, etc.) are acceptable.

added: in addition to some of the criteria affecting airline ticket pricing I previously mentioned, I forgot to add minimum/maximum stay requirements.

[ignis]

Long or short haul

Have found that prices can change a lot, look at 10 am and same website 5 pm same flight, time and date have jumped up or down, often by a lot. book early or last minuet ? I have in past year had done great last minuet deals.

As for this year went to Perth Australia in March, checked for months before, ended up booking 5 days before via a travel shop.. Thai Air non stop 20,300 baht with all tax, At no time did I find this price on-line, on Thai Air website or any other website..

May went to K.L. book 6 months in advance is 3,160 baht with Air Asia, lots can happen in 6 months, 4 days before going checked again Air Asia was well over 6,000 baht, called the Travel shop, sure they had a deal leaving in 4 days on Malaysia Air 3,200 baht

Few years ago flying from UK to BKK the best deal was always to leave UK on Christmas eve or Christmas day

I have a members card for Royal Brunei Airlines, there prices are good, but check the same flight, time and date 3 time in an hour will almost always give you a different price, check the next day gives you a totally different price again. here again the Travel shop appears to be able to give a better price

I have NEVER visited the travel shop, always done by phone/fax and email. tickets have always arrived next day to me out in the sticks 50 km from BKK.. Maybe would get a even better deal if visited ? if you live in BKK, Business Air Centre Co.,Ltd. 155/4-5 Sukhumvit Soi 11/1 Bangkok 10110

[Mario2008]

That time difference can be explained by travel agencies taking options on a ticket, which normally expire after 48 hours. So yes, checking during business hours or in the evening might see different results.

Flights that are full can sometimes show seats again.

[jfchandler]

June-August are peak fare season for the U.S. This when fares are the highest to/from the U.S. regardless of the season in the destination/origination point.

The OP has found a method of purchasing airline tickets that he thinks is both unique and perhaps unheard of. He is happy with the results. He is able to get a ticket for his travel dates at what he considers a fair value. That is all that is important to an individual consumer. He should continue this process, waiting until 10 days or less, to purchase all his future airline tickets. And maybe report back here on the success of his experiences. I assume he is continuing to check the prices on his upcoming trip to track any further price decreases. With this logic the ticket could possibly be free by the day of travel.

Again, this is a very, very common belief, even among relatively savvy people, but it is incorrect (unless your sample size is one in four million). Anyone who waits until the last day to book travel has to fly so the airline charges them the most money. I know this is a very difficult concept for people to accept, given we are talking about a perishable commodity, but it is true and accurate.

Generally speaking, you should buy your airline ticket as soon as your travel dates are firm, you find a price to be a fair value for you and other parameters (carrier, schedule, FF program, etc.) are acceptable.

Loma, you're making a lot of silly and unsupported comments above... You really ought to do better...

I never said my cited experience was the reality of the travel world... I simply said, here's the facts of my recent experiences, and those facts contradict what is the longheld travel guidance to buy tickets early... And I broached the question, what have others' actual experiences been on this point.... You're throwing out a lot of travel wisdom, but absolutely no factual examples/experience to back it up...

For example, you talk about the summer peak travel seasons to the U.S., and that may well be true... But as someone who's been flying between Thailand and Los Angeles for the past 10 years, and usually always traveling in June-July and December, I can vouch for the fact that my Christmas trips when I was flying LAX-BKK-LAX have always had generally higher fares than my summer (June-July) ones... I don't know why, but I do know that's consistently been the case. June may be the peak in the USA, but December and thereabouts is the peak for Thailand....

And no, of course I don't expect that waiting until the day before the flight will result in a free ticket... That's the kind of silly comment I was mentioning above... But if you were offering a bit more in the way of facts and supportable evidence and less in the way of travel industry cliches and chestnuts, you might make a more compelling case.

Edited December 17, 2010 by jfchandler

[jfchandler]

One of the nice things about the Kayak.com web site I mentioned above is that it allows you to create a user ID login, and then select a route or routes that you want to monitor, and any price targets you want to use...such as... travel between such and such dates and a ticket costing under $1000... Then, weekly or at other intervals you can set, they'll send you an email showing any available fares that meet your criteria...

It's not perfect, and not all airlines are captured in their system, AA for example is not... And for EVA, Kayak shows their fares, but seems not to reflect the "Hot Fares" specials often offered online thru EVA... But, even so, it provides a pretty good glimpse of the pricing trends for particular travel segments... You also can narrow or broaden the fare searches by including or excluding particular air carriers.

Another nice feature on Kayak is their "explore" function, which allows you to select a home city (such as Bangkok) and then it shows you the cheapest fares in its system to every major city around the world...by displaying a world map and then a little price icon over each location showing the fare amount from BKK (or whatever home city you choose) to those other locations....

There are lots of sites where you can go and do the searches yourself... like Expedia or Travelocity and such... The part I like about Kayak is I don't have to do the searching... Kayak does the searching for me, and simply emails me the results at the interval I choose.... Then, if I'm interested, I can click to go into their system and see the details on the trip/carriers/pricing.

[jfchandler]

Just to check again and see, here's an actual reservation I could have made today Dec. 17 thru the AA web site for Christmas travel to Los Angeles... $1042 RT all in.... I don't believe this same price fare would have been available for those Christmas week dates 1,2,3+ months ago...

[lomatopo]

Just to check again and see, here's an actual reservation I could have made today Dec. 17 thru the AA web site for Christmas travel to Los Angeles

Regarding your upcoming flights I assume you know you have a 9 hour layover at NRT outbound, and that you are comfortable making the trip from NRT to HND on your return on New Year's Eve? Pack light.

[bifftastic]

Interesting stuff, thanks everyone.

I've been checking tickets for my trip to Thailand next April and noticed they were more expensive this far ahead than last time I booked (£500 instead of £400), which was around 7 or 8 weeks before travelling. They've just started to come down a little to around £470/80 ish but this time I will continue to monitor after I decide to buy, just out of curiosity.

Just checked again and while I was on the site (skyscanners) the Jet prices LON-BKK-LON jumped up by £50! so now back up over £500 unless I want a 8 hour layover in Bahrain or something.

I'm sure there's a logic to all this but as yet I can't fathom it!

[lomatopo]

Just to check again and see, here's an actual reservation I could have made today Dec. 17 thru the AA web site for Christmas travel to Los Angeles

Regarding your upcoming flights I assume you know you have a 9 hour layover at NRT outbound, and that you are comfortable making the trip from NRT to HND on your return on New Year's Eve? Pack light.

Oops, sorry. I see this is just a sample reservation, not your actual ticketed rez.

The best I could do on AA for the same itin is $1,365.20 for a V fare. Presumably the N bucket sold out between the time of your query and mine?

[JusMe]

Fascinating subject, and definitely very complex.

I've been wondering about the origin of return flights, and varied costs.

I want to fly BKK~Canada~BKK June with return October.

I can buy my return ticket here in Bangkok for those dates, or I can buy a one way ticket from Bangkok to Canada in June (right now, a little less than half the quoted return flight), and I can then get a return flight Canada~BKK~Canada October with return the following June.

Lots of it is way out in the future, but the main problem is where to initiate the return flight - Bangkok or Canada.

Seems we have a lot of people with loads of knowledge and experience. Ideas on this issue?

[SantiSuk]

Santi, just wondering, since you're already buying your tickets one or two months ahead of your travel dates, perhaps you're not continuing to test price the same trip after you already have your ticket, say in the last several weeks before your travel...

Usually, people shop and price their tickets BEFORE their purchase, but not many continue to price and test the same flight after they've bought their ticket but before their actual travel...

Perhaps, you'd be surprised what you might find if you kept testing and pricing right up until the date of your travels...

Fair point, but I often test prices for upcoming flights against the advance booking prices and know enough about seasonality now to make some crude adjustments for that, so I am not completely flying by wires in my belief that booking late is a mistake on the London route.

My next flight is an EVA Air direct flight from London to BKK. Out to BKK on 28 December, back on 28 February. It was the cheapest direct fare I could find on 13 September and cost £769. That flight is priced today, 15 days away, at £868 (and is still the cheapest direct flight). I use Opodo.com - maybe others can find a slightly cheaper one. Maybe in 5 days time it will be cheaper than £769.

Actually the price is not as much different as I would have expected - I was expecting to see something like £1,000 for a 15 day away booking in the Xmas/New Year period, so I concede that the downside of booking late is less severe than I thought.

Maybe the carriers on the LA route are different in their pricing strategies. Booking late works for you on the LA route. Booking a few months ahead works for me on the London route. Lets agree to carry on regardless with our different strategies.Otherwise we run the risk of becoming airline fare geeks.

Edited December 17, 2010 by SantiSuk

[jfchandler]

Loma, you're correct the second time around... As I mentioned several times above, I made my trip at Thanksgiving because I was able, purchasing a couple weeks beforehand, to get a fare of about $1,100 on the same carriers...but with less of a layover, just two hours one way and 4 hours the other...

I bought the $1100 Thanksgiving ticket (minus a 2% credit card cash rebate) then because, after two months of constantly looking for a trip 3 months into the future at Christmas, I couldn't find anything under $1300...

But now, a week before Christmas (after I've already done my LA trip), I found several different Christmas week options for the same trip at $1040 earlier today about 10 am online, and found roughly the same fare online in the same place (AA website) a day or two ago, which led to me deciding to start this thread that purchasing well in advance doesn't always produce the most economical fares.

One other point, because my travel is oriented to going back to visit family periodically, there never is a time when I HAVE TO travel... I've sort of set for myself, based on the fare history of the LA-BKK segment, a rough fare target of $1,000 RT.... If I can get that fare or close to it, I'll travel... If I can't get that fare or close to it, I'll postpone my travel to a hopefully better time. The only way the airlines are going to get my business is if they are willing to offer competitive, attractive fares....

Just to check again and see, here's an actual reservation I could have made today Dec. 17 thru the AA web site for Christmas travel to Los Angeles

Regarding your upcoming flights I assume you know you have a 9 hour layover at NRT outbound, and that you are comfortable making the trip from NRT to HND on your return on New Year's Eve? Pack light.

Oops, sorry. I see this is just a sample reservation, not your actual ticketed rez.

The best I could do on AA for the same itin is $1,365.20 for a V fare. Presumably the N bucket sold out between the time of your query and mine?