The Money Mustache Community
Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: le-weekend on February 16, 2018, 12:19:17 PM
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I want to fly to Barcelona (from east coast) in October -- 8 to 9 months away. Prices have already increased, but I wonder if perhaps they will dip back down. There's a lot of conflicting advice out there about the "best time" to buy a plane ticket. Anyone have tips or experiences to share?
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1. someone will always get a better deal than you, so accept that you will loose the one-upmanship game.
2. prices typically dip 6-8 weeks out for domestic fares assuming no holiday/superbowl ect event. The airlines computer models look at how many seats sold and margins and diddle the prices and timing accordingly.
3. Its sort of like day trading, the prices will move up and down. and down and up. sometimes even left and right.
3. So you watch prices and at some point you are offered a good price, take it and move on with your life.
4. For off season flights like October, the various travel hacking/getting credit cards for intro miles can work to get a single, economy fair ticket. The various internet tales of two tickets RTW first class for the ultimate honeymoon, not so much.
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I'm seeing $450-500 or so round-trip from New York to Barcelona in October. Is that not cheap enough?
Basically, you just keep an eye on it and if the price is acceptable, buy the ticket. Then stop paying attention to prices.
Or get a credit card and travel hack it. You have enough time to do that if you're so inclined.
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I'm seeing $450-500 or so round-trip from New York to Barcelona in October. Is that not cheap enough?
Basically, you just keep an eye on it and if the price is acceptable, buy the ticket. Then stop paying attention to prices.
Or get a credit card and travel hack it. You have enough time to do that if you're so inclined.
Yes I saw those prices from NY --- $500 is great, but I'm hoping to fly straight out of the DC area. I didn't say that earlier. If I can get a flight to NY for a lot less than the price difference, it could be worth the extra hassle. The trouble is I have a very limited # of vacation days to spend on this trip; to spend half a work day getting from DC to NY, to me that's losing a lot. Best case scenario is I can work a full day, then get a late evening flight out of DC.
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I would grab the Barclays Arrival+ or Capital One Venture card and purchase the ticket with it. You'll get either $460 off the price with the Arrival+ or $560 off the ticket with the Venture.
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Start watching secret flying. Set up a price alert on Momondo.
If you know the days and are solid on travel plans, some of the cheap fare options on Momondo are fine. Just understand they offer little to no options after ticketing (large change fees, etc.).
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What does "travel hack" mean?
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What does "travel hack" mean?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+does+%22travel+hack%22+mean%3F
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Ah yes. Google is my friend. Thank you.
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What does "travel hack" mean?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+does+%22travel+hack%22+mean%3F
Pet peeve of mine, since "Travel hack" really sounds like finding hidden-city fares or something like that. But it's just using points to buy tickets. There's no hacking involved.
Methods of obtaining many points already falls under the term "churning"
Am I missing something here?
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What does "travel hack" mean?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+does+%22travel+hack%22+mean%3F
Pet peeve of mine, since "Travel hack" really sounds like finding hidden-city fares or something like that. But it's just using points to buy tickets. There's no hacking involved.
Methods of obtaining many points already falls under the term "churning"
Am I missing something here?
Eh, I dunno.
I don't recall what sort of search results turn up at that LMGTFY link. But in my personal opinion, travel hacking could mean a lot of things, including what you mentioned as well as other things (alliance partners, fare mistakes, fare sales, open jaws, stopovers, web tools to find good prices, figuring out whether to pay cash or use points, etc.)