When would you order tickets?

[hplusj 426]

On 4/25/2025 at 4:02 PM, Nywoek said:

And maybe it gets cheaper.

 

As someone who worked in the travel industry, both as flight crew and hotel operations, it does.  

 

Flight pricing functions a lot differently than hotel pricing, although they get grouped together a lot.  Typically hotels function on reaching and holding occupancy, therefore as the occupancy rises closer to a date, the prices hop up.  Flights do not function this way.  They tend to spike at the normal time people book--3 to 6 months out--and then plummet in the remaining weeks to overcompensate for potential undersells related to the industry a whole.  It's a more complicated algorithm of measuring airline and airport specific metrics on efficiency.  A trend that shows an airport likely to have more delayed or cancelled connections, could result in a sharp uptick in discounted seats in the remaining weeks, as they anticipate last-minute availability.  Of course it doesn't always work out the way they intended--this is why flights overselling can create problems.  But from the airlines' perspective, it's usually cost effective to gamble on sales this way.

 

Bottom line after all the shop talk, keep an eye on midweek pricing, and don't be afraid to hit the market closer to the date.  With flights, earlier is not always better like it is with hotels.

[Nywoek 77]

7 hours ago, Joe Bear said:

Maybe a little off topic but check skyscanner.net for flight prices.

Obv I don’t know your exact destination details but I just had a quick look and as an example, a round trip from Oslo to NYC departing July 24th is €376 

Thanks for the resource! My issue is that I am flying from a smaller norwegian city to oslo, it adds a bit to the cost and makes the planning harder with the connecting flights. I always get the whole trip from one airline (with partners) in case of of delays, christmas 2023 I was 25 minutes late from my first flight because of bad weather and they set me up with a hotel, free dinner and a new flight the next day with no need for any discussion or insurance involvement. But since this is a special circumstance (and we don’t have winter storms in july 🙈) if it’s cheaper to buy just the first trip the day before and then buy a night at the airport hotel+my usa trip the next day I will do that.
 

I see your point hplusj, definitely seen some weird stuff happening with pricing at different times, just a bit concerned we wouldn’t get seats together and the kids would would get all stressed out about it. Or just full flights due to summer. But it’ll probably be just fine, I am just an anxious person. 🙈