purchasing air fare

[disneymom15]

How far out or close to your trip do you purchase your air fare tickets. I use to purchase at about the 300 day out mark and have always gotten a pretty good deal. Now I'm starting to think it may be cheaper to wait it out. When do you purchase yours? We fly out of our regional airport and I can usually find fares at $250 or less.

[momofdisneyprincess]

We always fly Southwest so I usually purchase the day the fares are released, or as soon as we know when our trip is (whichever is first). With Southwest, they will give you a credit if the airfare goes down so we would rather be safe than sorry and make sure we get flights on the dates/times we want. Hope this helps.

[MNNHFLTX]

There is no hard and fast rule that I know of, but generally speaking I have found airfares to usually be cheaper at about 3-5 months prior to departure. Any earlier and I don't think the airlines have a good sense what flights they need to fill seats on; any later any discounted seats will already be snapped up.

But there are exceptions I've taken advantage of. I Last week I noticed that the airfares for August from Houston to Orlando went down about $50 per ticket (Continental) and purchased tickets. I also noticed that there were less than six seats left on both the outbound and inbound flights, so I guess we got lucky!

[aprilisis]

I usually purchase as early as possible and will call & ask for the difference if the ticket price goes down closer to the time of the flight.

[faline]

I usually give myself a 2-3 month window and go for the best price at my pre-set "final date" if I can't find what I consider a good deal prior to that.

[scootch713]

I have always found the best deals about 5 months out... like now, we are going in November and i booked Airtran from Pitts-MCO for only $69(cheapest i have ever paid in 6 years going in november) and got my return flight with southwest for $79.