Do Flight Costs Go Down?

I've never really paid attention to air line prices since we haven't travelled much (and when we booked our last trip we booked our resort and then booked our airline right away). Do flight prices go down much from when they are released? Our flights should open up in the next couple months but when looking at other dates for return flights from Toronto to Fort Lauderdale, they are all pretty consistent at $577 a person (for the normal flight time as opposed to leaving very early or late in the day). This is true whether I look at flights in the next couple months or even out to next February. So it almost seems like these are static costs.

Do flights costs typically go down (and up)?

Do flights costs typically go down (and up)?

The only thing that one can say with confidence is that as a matter of generality, flight prices will tend to go up as the date of the flight approaches, in particular during the last 4-6 weeks before the flight.

But even that is not a rule. A couple of years ago, we booked to fly from London to Johannesburg for Christmas. A business class ticket would have been something like £4,000 round-trip, and even an economy ticket was over £1,000. A few days before we left, the business class price was reduced to £1,006 round-trip, so we did a ticket swap.

That offer came again last Christmas, but we were already committed to staying at home that year.

Airline ticket pricing is a dynamic process that continually monitors supply and demand, applies sophisticated algorithms, adjusts inventory buckets to maximize airline revenue and generally confuses the mass of the traveling public.

In other words....it goes up and down to meet market conditions. Your old friends supply and demand.

Note that ANY statement about pricing trends and patterns is AT BEST a generality about the market as a whole. With tens of thousands of flights worldwide each day, your specific flight may have a completely different pricing paradigm than another.

Remember that it is not the "price" of the ticket that changes, but rather the amount of inventory allocated to the myriad of fare buckets which are available. Airlines use inventory allocation to maximize revenue - the actual fare levels remain fairly fixed, while it is how many seats are allocated to be sold at each level that is dynamically variable.

It is possible that, at the opening of the flight, inventory is only loaded into the higher buckets. As time goes by, in order to stimulate demand for that particular flight, inventory may be shifted to a lower priced bucket. OTOH, if demand is strong, there is no reason to "discount" that inventory and it stays in the higher buckets.

How can you predict this? In specifics, you can't. The computer systems are smarter and faster than you are. But you can use general principles to think through the situation. Tickets at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break, Super Bowl and the like will be at a premium because of.....tada....higher demand. That's public knowledge, so take advantage of it. Lots will want to fly to see Grandma for turkey, so get your tickets early. Similarly "cruise days" will see tens of thousands flying in/out of cruise ports.

Hope that's some help. Happy to answer detailed questions if you have them.

Thanks for the replies and the great explanation. We'll be flying just after Easter (and should be after spring breaks) so at least we won't be going at peak time. Supply and demand...totally makes sense.

And don't assume that by being an early bird you're getting the cheapest seats. Eleven months out, airlines don't necessarily know what their operating costs are going to be like almost a year ahead. Oil prices (hence jet fuel) might spike back up in the meantime, for example, so to be conservative and not risk profit loss, the airlines might set a higher "opening" price at T-330 days or whatever, then reduce the price as their costs (and supply/demand, of course) make things clearer going forward. And of course, if you're Canadian, the CDN$ vs. the US$ exchange can make a big difference too.

And of course when I say "price," I'm referring to the fare categories ("buckets") that are made available at any one time.

And don't assume that by being an early bird you're getting the cheapest seats. Eleven months out, airlines don't necessarily know what their operating costs are going to be like almost a year ahead. Oil prices (hence jet fuel) might spike back up in the meantime, for example, so to be conservative and not risk profit loss, the airlines might set a higher "opening" price at T-330 days or whatever, then reduce the price as their costs (and supply/demand, of course) make things clearer going forward. And of course, if you're Canadian, the CDN$ vs. the US$ exchange can make a big difference too.

 

And of course when I say "price," I'm referring to the fare categories ("buckets") that are made available at any one time.

Yes, very true. Current exchange rate ain't helping.

There are some online tools that help you get an idea whether a given route is more likely to go or down; kayak.com is very simple to use (if that doesn't come through visibly, it's the website named after a Canadian canoe that sounds a lot like a Tibetan bovine driving a small Ford car).

For every route with enough data they list a % estimate of whether that flight will go up or down, as well as historic 'the cheapest tickets were available X days before flight' info.

It does very much depend where you're flying between, but for North American flights that 'cheapest date' seems to very often be between 30 and 45 days before the flight.

Thanks so much for the kayak site. Must quicker to compare best cost instead of going one by one. Neat too that it estimates if the price will go up and you can create price alerts if you're watching a particular day.

if that doesn't come through visibly, it's the website named after a Canadian canoe that sounds a lot like a Tibetan bovine driving a small Ford car

:confused::confused:

:confused::confused:

I can never recall which websites get auto-blanked by cruisecritic - some do, so instead of nameofsite.com you see **********.com displayed.

In case Kayak was one of the forbidden sites, my clues were supposed to enable figuring out the URL - the Ford Ka was one of their smallest ever autos, and a Yak is the best-known Tibetan bovine...

By looking at http://www.faredetective.com/farehistory/flights-from-Toronto-YYZ-to-Fort_Lauderdale-FLL.html

you can see that airfares between Toronto and FLL increased about once a month on a very consistent basis over the past year. Thus, one can surmise with some assurance, that that trend will continue.

 

For every route with enough data they list a % estimate of whether that flight will go up or down, as well as historic 'the cheapest tickets were available X days before flight' info.

 

The problem with using past data to try to predict future price patterns is two fold. One, the factors contributing to price may have changed. Two, usually the data is an average of all past flights and so price extremes are minimized, whereas one is usually is looking at travel on one specific date in the future and there is no "average" for that.

martincath, ha ha...I know what you meant. No idea as well why some web urls get changed with ***s.

By looking at http://www.faredetective.com/farehistory/flights-from-Toronto-YYZ-to-Fort_Lauderdale-FLL.html

 

you can see that airfares between Toronto and FLL increased about once a month on a very consistent basis over the past year. Thus, one can surmise with some assurance, that that trend will continue.

Very cool. Thanks. So much good info on here.

I have a feeling that the Canadian to US dollar isn't helping airline prices now either.

I can never recall which websites get auto-blanked by cruisecritic - some do, so instead of nameofsite.com you see **********.com displayed.

 

In case Kayak was one of the forbidden sites, my clues were supposed to enable figuring out the URL - the Ford Ka was one of their smallest ever autos, and a Yak is the best-known Tibetan bovine...

Ah ok, thanks. I only ever use the Cruise Air forum on this site.

The golden rule is the price will drop immediately after you press the Buy now button.

The golden rule is the price will drop immediately after you press the Buy now button.

Ha ha...so true!

martincath, ha ha...I know what you meant. No idea as well why some web urls get changed with ****s.

Because you aren't allowed to post links to online cruise TAs. Those will be xxxx out.